This paper examines the question of whether economic factors played an important role in determining strike activity in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. A review of recent research shows one author, David Snyder, concluding that economic factors mattered little during that period and that union organization and political variables explained much more; and another, P. K. Edwards, concluding the opposite. A retest of these authors' analyses, employing ordinary least squares regression and a variety of measures, suggests that Snyder's position is more sound. This author argues, however, that Edwards was correct in claiming that economic factors are major determinants of the extent of unionism as well as of strike activity, and thus one needs to apply a two-stage least squares test of the Snyder hypothesis. When that is done, the results show that economic variables are highly significant determinants of strike activity throughout the pre-1949 period, but for the subperiod 1921 -29 noneconomic factors also play a role. WERE U.S. strikes in the first half of the twentieth century caused primarily by economic or institutional factors? David Snyder, in a 1977 article in this Review, professes that union organization and political factors explain strikes in this period in large part and economic factors only weakly or not at all.' In a subsequent article published elsewhere, however, P. K. Edwards indicates that economic factors matter a great deal and that Snyder's findings on union organization and political effects can be refuted.2 felter and Johnson, Kaufman, and Shalev confirm the importance of economic factors in this time period.
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