Employer behavior when workers can unionize

Unionization imposes substantial costs on employers. This paper develops a model that recognizes that, as a result, employers will set wages and employment taking into account the effect of their decisions on workers' incentives to organize. This model of employer behavior allows us to address two questions jointly: What determines which firms become unionized? And what are the consequences of unionization for employment and wages in nonunion firms? The implications of the model depart significantly from those of previous work, which either ignored employers' strategic behavior, or treated these questions in isolation

ff-Divergence Inequalities via Functional Domination

This paper considers derivation of $f$-divergence inequalities via the approach of functional domination. Bounds on an $f$-divergence based on one or several other $f$-divergences are introduced, dealing with pairs of probability measures defined on arbitrary alphabets. In addition, a variety of bounds are shown to hold under boundedness assumptions on the relative information. The journal paper, which includes more approaches for the derivation of f-divergence inequalities and proofs, is available on the arXiv at https://arxiv.org/abs/1508.00335, and it has been published in the IEEE Trans. on Information Theory, vol. 62, no. 11, pp. 5973-6006, November 2016.Comment: A conference paper, 5 pages. To be presented in the 2016 ICSEE International Conference on the Science of Electrical Engineering, Nov. 16--18, Eilat, Israel. See https://arxiv.org/abs/1508.00335 for the full paper version, published as a journal paper in the IEEE Trans. on Information Theory, vol. 62, no. 11, pp. 5973-6006, November 201

Nonasymptotic noisy lossy source coding

This paper shows new general nonasymptotic achievability and converse bounds and performs their dispersion analysis for the lossy compression problem in which the compressor observes the source through a noisy channel. While this problem is asymptotically equivalent to a noiseless lossy source coding problem with a modified distortion function, nonasymptotically there is a noticeable gap in how fast their minimum achievable coding rates approach the common rate-distortion function, as evidenced both by the refined asymptotic analysis (dispersion) and the numerical results. The size of the gap between the dispersions of the noisy problem and the asymptotically equivalent noiseless problem depends on the stochastic variability of the channel through which the compressor observes the source.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 201

Lossy joint source-channel coding in the finite blocklength regime

This paper finds new tight finite-blocklength bounds for the best achievable lossy joint source-channel code rate, and demonstrates that joint source-channel code design brings considerable performance advantage over a separate one in the non-asymptotic regime. A joint source-channel code maps a block of $k$ source symbols onto a length$-n$ channel codeword, and the fidelity of reproduction at the receiver end is measured by the probability $\epsilon$ that the distortion exceeds a given threshold $d$. For memoryless sources and channels, it is demonstrated that the parameters of the best joint source-channel code must satisfy $nC - kR(d) \approx \sqrt{nV + k \mathcal V(d)} Q(\epsilon)$, where $C$ and $V$ are the channel capacity and channel dispersion, respectively; $R(d)$ and $\mathcal V(d)$ are the source rate-distortion and rate-dispersion functions; and $Q$ is the standard Gaussian complementary cdf. Symbol-by-symbol (uncoded) transmission is known to achieve the Shannon limit when the source and channel satisfy a certain probabilistic matching condition. In this paper we show that even when this condition is not satisfied, symbol-by-symbol transmission is, in some cases, the best known strategy in the non-asymptotic regime

The economics of union organization : efficiency, information and profitability.

This article presents a game theoretical model of union organization that highlights the role played by efficiency and asymmetric information as determinants of unionization and questions commonly held assumptions about the effect of firm profitability on unionization decisions. In the model, employers set wages taking into account the effect of their choices on workers' incentives to unionize. As a result of employers' strategic wage setting, collective bargaining emerges in equilibrium only if it increases surplus or if there is asymmetric information about the consequences of unionization. While unionization is usually assumed to be more likely in more profitable firms, the model shows that the probability of unionization will be higher in firms with lower rents. It also shows that the union wage premium and unionization will tend to be negatively correlated.Unionization; Asymmetric information; Union efficiency; Profitability;

Income, Mortality, and Literacy Distribution Dynamics Across States in Mexico: 1940-2000

This paper analyzes the dynamics of the distributions of per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the infant mortality rate, and the adult literacy rate across states in Mexico between 1994 and 2000. It analyzes the hypothesis of convergence to a common lConvergence, distribution dynamics, markov chain, kernel densities, transition matrix, panel data, Mexico

Threat of unionization and nonunion employment.

If nonunion employers set both wages and employment strategically to forestall unionization, the threat of unionization, despite raising wages, increases employment above competitive levels, in contrast with the prediction of standard models.Threat of unionization; Employment determination;