The Efficiency of Collective Bargaining in Public Schools

This paper develops a bargaining model of wage and employment determination for the public sectror. The solution to the model generates structural wage and employment equations that are estimated using data from New York State teacher-school district collective bargaining agreements. An advantage of this approach is that the major collective bargaining models (monopoly union, right to manage, efficient contracting, and inefficient contracting) are nested in the structural equations based on flexible functional forms and these models can be empirically tested as restrictions on estimated model parameters. The empirical results suggest that the allocation of resources generated by collective bargaining in New York State public schools is, by and large, not Pareto efficient. Furthermore, it is possible to estimate separate measures of union bargaining power over wages and employment. Empirically, it appears that union bargaining power over wages is around 0.53, while bargaining power over employment is around 0.71. In addition, the paper demonstrates the importance of controlling for the nature of the collective agreement when measuring the level of public services that flow to a community in the presence of a unionized public sector work force. Nous proposons un modèle de négociations collectives sur les salaires et l'emploi dans le secteur public. La solution de ce modèle implique des équations structurelles de détermination des salaires et d'emploi qui sont estimées à partir de données provenant des conventions colléctives des écoles publiques de l'état de New York. Notre approche a l'avantage d'englober tous les modèles majeurs de la littérature sur les négociations collectives (syndicat monopole, droit à gérer, négociations efficaces et négociations inefficaces) et de relier chaque modèle à une restriction d'égalité sur un ou plusieurs paramètres estimés. Nos résultats suggèrent que l'allocation des ressources spécifiée dans les conventions collectives des enseignants de l'état de New York n'est, en générale, pas efficace. De plus, notre approche nous permet d'estimer le pouvoir de négociationsur les salaires et sur l'emploi séparément. Nous trouvons un pouvoir de négociation sur les salaires de 0.53, et sur l'emploi de 0.71. Finalement, nous démontrons l'importance de contrôler le caractère endogène des salaires lors de l'analyse des flux des services publics dans un marché syndicalisé.Collective Bargaining, Efficient Contracting, Public Sector Union, Education, Négociations collectives, contrats efficaces, syndicat du secteur public, éducation

The Evolution of a Female Genital Trait Widely Distributed in the Lepidoptera: Comparative Evidence for an Effect of Sexual Coevolution

Sexual coevolution is considered responsible for the evolution of many male genital traits, but its effect on female genital morphology is poorly understood. In many lepidopterans, females become temporarily unreceptive after mating and the length of this refractory period is inversely related to the amount of spermatophore remaining in their genital tracts. Sperm competition can select for males that delay female remating by transferring spermatophores with thick spermatophore envelopes that take more time to be broken. These envelopes could select for signa, sclerotized sharp structures located within the female genital tract, that are used for breaking spermatophores. Thus, this hypothesis predicts that thick spermatophore envelopes and signa evolve in polyandrous species, and that these adaptations are lost when monandry evolves subsequently. Here we test the expected associations between female mating pattern and presence/absence of signa, and review the scant information available on the thickness of spermatophore envelopes.We made a literature review and found information on female mating pattern (monandry/polyandry), presence/absence of signa and phylogenetic position for 37 taxa. We built a phylogenetic supertree for these taxa, mapped both traits on it, and tested for the predicted association by using Pagel's test for correlated evolution. We found that, as predicted by our hypothesis, monandry evolved eight times and in five of them signa were lost; preliminary evidence suggests that at least in two of the three exceptions males imposed monandry on females by means of specially thick spermatophore envelopes. Previously published data on six genera of Papilionidae is in agreement with the predicted associations between mating pattern and the characteristics of spermatophore envelopes and signa.Our results support the hypothesis that signa are a product of sexually antagonistic coevolution with spermatophore envelopes

The Efficiency of Collective Bargaining in Public Schools

Paper also presented at the Université de Lille 3 Conference"Journée sur la Concurrence Imparfaite", January 1998, Lille, France, and at the 13èmes Journées de Mocroéconomie Appliquée, June 1996, Liège, Belgium.This paper develops a bargaining model of wage and employment determination for the public sector. The solution to the model generates structural wage and employment equations that are estimated using data from New York State teacher-school district collective bargaining agreements. An advantage of this approach is that the major collective bargaining models (monopoly nion, right to manage, efficient contracting, and inefficient contracting) are nested in the structural equations based on flexible functional forms and these models can be empirically tested as restrictions on estimated model parameters. The empirical results suggest that the allocation of resources generated by ollective bargaining in New York State public schools is, by and large, not Pareto efficient. Furthermore, it is possible to estimate separate measures of union bargaining power over wages and employment. Empirically, it appears that union bargaining power over wages is around 0.53, while bargaining power over employment is around 0.71. In addition, the paper demonstrates the importance of controlling for the nature of the collective agreement when measuring the level of public services that flow to a community in the presence of a unionized public sector work force.Nous proposons un modèle de négociations collectives sur les salaires et l'emploi dans le secteur public. La solution de ce modèle implique des équations structurelles de détermination des salaires et d'emploi qui sont estimées à partir de données provenant des conventions colléctives des écoles publiques de l'état de New York. Notre approche a l'avantage d'englober tous les modèles majeurs de la littérature sur les négociations collectives (syndicat monopole, droit à gérer, négociations efficaces et négociations inefficaces) et de relier chaque modèle à une restriction d'égalité sur un ou plusieurs paramètres estimés. Nos résultats suggèrent que l'allocation des ressources spécifiée dans les conventions collectives des enseignants de l'état de New York n'est, en générale, pas efficace. De plus, notre approche nous permet d'estimer le pouvoir de négociationsur les salaires et sur l'emploi séparément. ous trouvons un pouvoir de négociation sur les salaires de 0.53, et sur l'emploi de 0.71. Finalement, nous démontrons l'importance de contrôler le caractère endogène des salaires lors de l'analyse des flux des services publics dans un marché syndicalisé

Corrigendum: The Price Effects of a Large Merger of Manufacturers: A Case Study of Maytag Whirlpool

In equations (1), (2), and (3) of our paper, we state that we simultaneously control for time effects, age effects, and product fixed effects. Because there is an exact linear relationship between age, time, and time at birth (a time-invariant product characteristic that will be absorbed by the product fixed effects), it is not possible to separately identify time effects, age effects, and product fixed effects (see Deaton 1997 for a discussion). As a result, the age-coefficients we plotted in Figures 1 and 2 can only be identified by an arbitrary normalization. </jats:p

Retail gasoline pricing: What do we know?

We use a data set consisting of a three year panel of prices from a sample of gasoline stations located in suburban Washington DC and a corresponding census of the region's stations to develop three new empirical findings about retail gasoline pricing. First, while average retail margins vary substantially over time (by more than 50% over the three years we analyze), the shape of the margin distribution remains relatively constant. Second, there is substantial heterogeneity in pricing behavior: stations charging very low or very high prices are more likely to maintain their pricing position than stations charging prices near the mean. Third, retail gasoline pricing is dynamic. Despite the heterogeneity in station pricing behavior, stations frequently change their relative pricing position in this distribution, sometimes dramatically. We then relate these three findings to relevant theories of retail pricing. While many models of retail pricing are consistent with some of our findings, we find that all have serious shortcomings.Retailing Petroleum industry Pricing Gasoline