This paper evaluates the effects of unionization on profitability, labor productivity and wages, using panel data at the firm-level. Leveraging a French regulatory change I identify for each given year which labor unions are certified within each French firm. I run firm-level fixed-effects models and show that profitability decreases when firms get unionized. Profitability decreases further when additional labor unions become certified, indicating that labor unions' diversity increases labor unions' detrimental effect on profitability.
The union wage premium increases as the number of certified labor unions rises while the labor productivity of the firm does not increase enough to compensate for this increasing wage premium, leading to lower profitability. Moreover, political affiliations of labor unions turn out to have no marginal effect on the outcome variables. All results are consistent using matched union/non-union samples, and instrumental variable's estimations.
Professor Fabien-Antoine Dugardin holds a PhD from the University Paris-Dauphine. He is an associate Professor of Finance at the University of Lorraine (France). He works with micro-data from the CASD (https://www.casd.eu/) on various empirical corporate finance topics such as unionization, and the gender pay gap. He also works on empirical accounting issues related to income smoothing.
His papers have been accepted in various conferences such as FMA Annual, EFMA, and AFFi (Best AFFi conference paper in 2024).
The seminar will be held in English.
Major information: Giulia Baschieri (giulia.baschieri@unibo.it).