Jens Christiansen

Labor relations and productivity growth in advanced capitalist economies

In this paper, we claim that worker rights (including collective bargaining rights, employment protection, and income security) promote productivity growth. We argue that cooperative labor-management relations encourage workers to make positive contributions to technical and organizational innovations that raise labor productivity, and that an industrial relations system that secures strong worker rights fosters cooperative labor-management relations. These arguments are supported by an empirical analysis of long-run productivity growth in 15 advanced capitalist countries. We first develop an index of worker rights and show its positive effect on several indicators of labor-management cooperation. We then develop an index combining measures of worker rights and labor-management cooperation and show its positive effect on the rate of growth of labor productivity.

Employment and Productivity Growth in Europe and North America: The Impact of Labor Market Institutions

In this paper, we examine long-run employment and productivity growth in the major economies of North America and Europe from 1960 to the early 1990s. We develop a model in which output growth is determined by the growth of aggregate demand, and the relative contributions of employment and productivity growth to the growth of output depend on country specific labor market institutions. We find that institutions that promote collective bargaining, employment security and social protection have roughly equal and opposite effects on employment growth (negative) and productivity growth (positive), giving rise to an inverse relationship between these variables. The welfare implications of this finding are that labor market deregulation could result in more work and greater inequality and insecurity for workers, without significantly increasing the rate of economic growth.

The Decline of Child Labor in the U.S. Fruit and Vegetable Canning Industry: Law or Economics?

Child labor in the U.S. economy declined significantly between 1880 and 1920. This case study of the fruit and vegetable canning industry examines variations in laws, technology, and income across states and time to assess the relative importance of legal and economic factors in reducing the employment of children. The authors find that economic factors, especially a technologically driven shift toward a greater demand for adult labor, were relatively more important. While economic development was often a precondition for legal restrictions on child labor, compulsory schooling and child labor laws restricted the employment of children in technologically backward canneries.

Worker Rights Promote Productivity Growth

ROBERT BUCHELE is Professor of Economics at Smith College. JENS CHRISTIANSEN is Professor of Economics at Mount Holyoke College. industrial-relations system ought to be judged, at least in part, on how workers are treated by it. So there is a case for a policy that enhances worker rights even if that policy reduces productivity growth. But in contrast to the widespread belief today that worker rights undermine economic efficiency, we believe that a strong case can be made that worker rights enhance productivity. In sum, whats good for workers is also good for the economy, certainly in the long run as well as in the short run.