Strikes: Models and Evidence

Abstract

Why do strikes occur? This is a question which has attracted the attention of labour economists fairly intensively for at least the past six decades. This chapter provides a review of the economists’ analysis of strike activity, covering both the main theoretical models and the empirical evidence. The chapter begins with a brief review of the early (i.e. pre-1967) literature which, as we will see, focused its principal attention on questions regarding the existence and strength of cyclical fluctuations in strike activity. In section 6.3 we consider in some detail the more recent — primarily econometric — studies which first appeared in the US literature in the late 1960s. This approach spread fairly rapidly throughout the international literature as researchers in a wide range of countries adapted the basic model to suit their local institutional and other circumstances and fitted it, with varying degrees of success, to local data at various levels of aggregation. In section 6.4 we consider some of the important recent developments which have occurred in the economic analysis of strike activity, while the final section provides some concluding remarks.

The first draft of this chapter was written whilst the author was Pitt-Cobbett Visiting Fellow at the University of Tasmania. Financial support from the Pitt-Cobbett Trust as well as the hospitality of the Department of Economics is gratefully acknowledged.