Unions in the past as well as in today’s economy play an important and sometimes controversial role in the allocation of labour and the distribution of income. The main objective of this lecture course is to develop a theoretical framework for analysing the role of unions and collective bargaining. The focus will be on microeconomic models of unions and on econometric evidence regarding the impact of unions on wages, employment, productivity and other key economic variables. 

After the course the students should be familiar with

· Basic bargaining theory and the Hick Paradox.
· The monopoly union model, the right to manage model and the efficient contract model.
· Key empirical results related to union mark-ups and the conceptual difficulties related to estimating these effects.
· The collective response theory of unions.

The course outline is available below. In addition, lecture notes and PowerPoint presentations are available below. Finally, a set of supervision questions is available.

Lecture notes and PowerPoint presentations:

Lecture 1 (PowerPoint).

Lecture 2 (PowerPoint)

Lecture 3 (PowerPoint)

Lecture 4 (PowerPoint)

Supervision questions

Assignment 1: Theory and Empirical Evidence (related directly to lectures)