Does union membership really reduce job satisfaction?

We investigate the effect of union membership on job satisfaction. Using linked employer-employee data from the 1998 British Workplace Employee Relations Survey, we analyse the relationship between the membership decision and overall job satisfaction and satisfaction with pay. In this paper we account for the endogenous selection induced by the sorting of workers into unionized jobs. Controlling for both individual and establishment heterogeneity and explicitly modelling the effect of union status, we find that the marked difference in job satisfaction between unionized and non-unionized workers disappears, suggesting that a selection effect, rather than a causal effect, characterizes the relationship. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2004.

Human Nature in the Adaptation of Trust

This chapter pleads for more inspiration from human nature, in agent-based modeling.As an illustration of an effort in that direction, it summarizes and discusses an agentbased model of the build-up and adaptation of trust between multiple producers and suppliers.The central question is whether, and under what conditions, trust and loyalty are viable in markets.While the model incorporates some well known behavioural phenomena from the trust literature, more extended modeling of human nature is called for.The chapter explores a line of further research on the basis of notions of mental framing and frame switching on the basis of relational signaling, derived from social psychology.