The productivity puzzle and the decline of unions
研究发现美国1980年代工会快速衰落导致企业雇佣和解雇成本降低，企业减少劳动力囤积，从而解释了生产率顺周期性突然消失的“生产率之谜”。
This paper finds that rapid de-unionization can explain the sudden vanishing of the procyclicality of productivity in the U.S. during the 1980s, a phenomenon dubbed the ‘productivity puzzle’. Cross-sectional evidence from U.S. states and industries shows that a decline in union power led to a decrease in the cost of hiring and firing workers, which prompted firms to rely less on labor hoarding, making productivity less procyclical. In a model with endogenous worker effort, a decrease in employment adjustment cost by the amount implied by de-unionization explains a significant part of the observed decline in the procyclicality of productivity.