Do unions contribute to creative destruction?

We apply a shift-share approach and historical unionisation data from 1918 to study the impact of regional unionisation changes in Norway on regional wage and productivity growth, job-creation and -destruction and social security uptake during the period 2003–2012. As unionisation increases, wages grow. Lay-offs through plant closures and shrinking workplaces increase, causing higher retirement rates, while job creation, plant entry and other social security uptakes are unaffected. Productivity grows, partly by enhanced productivity among surviving and new firms and partly by less productive firms forced to close due to increased labour costs. Thus, unions promote creative destruction.

The Effects of State Business Taxes on Plant Closures: Evidence from Unemployment Insurance Taxation and Multi-Establishment Firms

This paper investigates the extent to which state-level differences in business taxes inuence the location decisions of multi-establishment firms. Each state in the United States administers their own unemployment insurance (UI) program, and cross-state variation leads to significant tax differences across state lines. This decentralized administration creates opposing employment incentives on the intensive and extensive margins depending on the economic conditions. Studying the locations of multi-state manufacturing firms, I find that firms are more likely to exit from high-tax states during economic downturns, but high-tax plants experience more stable employment during non-recession years.

The Effects of Mega-Mergers

Chapter 4 shows that a good part of the decrease in competition has resulted from the recent wave of large mergers. Merger regulation, which is based solely on economic considerations, is limited to assessing the potential anticompetitive effects among the competing firms, without any consideration of the size alone of the combined firm or the effects on noncompeting firms. In addition, many mergers are justified by a claim of increased efficiencies in the new firm, which is often the result of layoffs and plant closures. Not only does this cause significant job losses, it also hurts families and communities. Even though economic theory does not take these kinds of externalities into account, they are nonetheless harmful consequences of mergers. Numerous studies have shown that many mergers do not result in lower prices, while some mergers have even led to price increases. In these mergers, workers suffered not for the sake of consumers but for the financial benefits reaped by the shareholders and managers of the merging firms and by the professionals who put the deals together. It also appears that investment advisors encourage mergers just so that they can profit from the transactions, regardless of the degree of benefit provided to consumers (or even shareholders). With little or no benefit to consumers from some mergers and significant harm to labor, the chapter argues that we need to reassess how the government should review mergers.

214 Effects of Reducing Digestible Lysine and Tryptophan to Lysine Ratio on Growth Performance of Grow-finish Pigs

Due to packing plant closures or slow-downs, many producers needed to examine ways to reduce average daily gain (ADG) of finishing pigs. Therefore, a total of 1,080 pigs (L337 × 1050, PIC; initially 32.0 kg) were used in a 119-d trial to evaluate the effects of reducing dietary standardized ileal digestibility (SID) Lys and SID Trp:Lys ratio to slow growth of finishing pigs in a commercial setting. Pigs were randomly allotted in weight blocks to 1 of 4 dietary regimens with 27 pigs/pen and 10 replications/regimen. Pigs were fed a control regimen (100% of the estimated SID Lys requirement for pigs in this facility) formulated to contain 1.10, 1.01, 0.91, 0.83, 0.79, 0.71 and 0.67% SID Lys from 32 to 42, 42 to 51, 51 to 72, 72 to 85, 85 to 97, 97 to 112, and, 112 to 130 kg, respectively. Two other regimens contained 90 or 80% of the Lys estimate. These 3 regimes were formulated to a SID Trp:Lys ratio of 19% except for the last dietary phase that contained 17% SID Trp:Lys ratio. The fourth regimen contained 80% of the SID Lys estimate with 16% SID Trp:Lys in all phases. The statistical model included fixed effects of treatment, random effect of block, linear and quadratic effects of SID Lys and pairwise comparison of the two 80% treatments. Overall, decreasing SID Lys decreased (linear, P < 0.01) ADG and final body weight (BW) and tended (P < 0.10) to decrease gain:feed ratio (G:F). Reducing the Trp:Lys ratio decreased (P = 0.014) ADG and final BW compared to pigs fed diets with 80% SID Lys with higher SID Trp:Lys. In summary, decreasing SID Lys reduced ADG and feeding a reduced SID Trp:Lys ratio resulted in a further decrease in ADG of grow-finish pigs.