Alienation from society, self estrangement, and personality characteristics from the Mmp1 in normals and schizophrenics.

Anomy has been a popular concept in sociological literature and has been related to such diverse events as suicide (Durkheim, 1897), crime (Lander, 195*0, political behavior (Kornhauser, Sheppard, & Mayer, 1956), racial prejudice (Srole, 1956), religious orthodoxy (Keedy, 1958), heart disease (Caron, Wardell, & Bahnson, 1963), achievement of life goals (Meir & Bell, 1959), deviant behavior in general (Nettler, 1959; Merton, 1956), and rates of mental hospitalization (Gibbs, 1962). As originally conceptualized by Durkheim, anomy referred to a societal condition existing outside of individuals occupying roles in a social system, and was postulated to be a result of the instinctive soaring of human aspirations in the absence of effective social controls

What Do Unions Do for Economic Performance?

Twenty years have passed since Freeman and Medoff's What Do Unions Do? This essay assesses their analysis of how unions in the U.S. private sector affect economic performance - productivity, profitability, investment, and growth. Freeman and Medoff are clearly correct that union productivity effects vary substantially across workplaces. Their conclusion that union effects are on average positive and substantial cannot be sustained, subsequent evidence suggesting an average union productivity effect near zero. Their speculation that productivity effects are larger in more competitive environments appears to hold up, although more evidence is needed. Subsequent literature continues to find unions associated with lower profitability, as noted by Freeman and Medoff. Unions are found to tax returns stemming from market power, but industry concentration is not the source of such returns. Rather, unions capture firm quasi-rents arising from long-lived tangible and intangible capital and from firm-specific advantages. Lower profits and the union tax on asset returns leads to reduced investment and, subsequently, lower employment and productivity growth. There is little evidence that unionization leads to higher rates of business failure. Given the decline in U.S. private sector unionism, I explore avenues through which individual and collective voice might be enhanced, focusing on labor law and workplace governance defaults. Substantial enhancement of voice requires change in the nonunion sector and employer as well as worker initiatives. It is unclear whether labor unions would be revitalized or further marginalized by such an evolution

Unions, Dynamism and economic performance

This paper explores the relationship between economic performance and US unionism, focusing first on what we do and do not know based on empirical research handicapped by limited data on establishment and firm level collective bargaining coverage. Evidence on the relationship of unions with wages, productivity, profitability, investment, debt, employment growth, and business failures are all relevant in assessing the future of unions and public policy with respect to unions. A reasonably coherent story emerges from the empirical literature, albeit one that rests heavily on evidence that is dated and (arguably) unable to identify truly causal effects. The paper's principal thesis is that union decline has been tied fundamentally to competitive forces and economic dynamism. Implications of these findings for labor law policy and the future of worker voice institutions is discussed briefly in a final section