Abstract. Meta-regression analysis (MRA) can provide objective and comprehensive summaries of economics research. Their use has grown rapidly over the last few decades. To improve transparency and to raise the quality of MRA, the meta-analysis of economics research-network (MAER-Net) has created the below reporting guidelines. Future meta-analyses in economics will be expected to follow these guidelines or give valid reasons why a meta-analysis must deviate from them.

The impact of unions on productivity is explored using meta-analysis and meta-regression analysis. It is shown that most of the variation in published results is due to specification differences between studies. After controlling for differences between studies, a negative association between unions and productivity is established for the United Kingdom, whereas a positive association is established for the United States in general and for U.S. manufacturing.T HE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN UNIONS AND PRODUCTIVITY has attracted considerable attention from scholars in industrial relations and economics, as well as from policymakers, unions, and business in general. Despite voluminous theoretical literature, controversy continues regarding the impact of unions on productivity, as well as on other aspects of business, such as employment, research and development (R&D), profitability, and investment. In traditional economic analysis, unions are said to distort labor market outcomes through, for example, legal and custom-driven restrictions on relative wages, the imposition of employment restrictions, and protection against layoffs. Unions are said also to be a contributing factor to aggregate as well as sectoral unemployment and the associated output losses. In contrast to these arguments, Freeman (1976) andFreeman andMedoff (1984) argued that unions can raise productivity by providing workers with a means of expressing discontent as an alternative to "exiting," by opening up communication channels between workers and management, and by inducing managers to alter methods of production and to adopt more efficient policies.The controversy in the theoretical literature is matched by controversy in the empirical literature. Empirical findings are divided between positive and negative union-productivity effects, and many studies cannot reject the hypothesis of a zero effect. Hence generalizations from the available evidence * The authors' affiliations are, respectively,

The effect of unions on profits continues to be an unresolved theoretical and empirical issue. In this paper, clustered data analysis and hierarchical linear meta-regression models are applied to the population of forty-five econometric studies that report 532 estimates of the direct effect of unions on profits. Unions have a significant negative effect on profits in the United States, and this effect is larger when market-based measures of profits are used. Separate meta-regression analyses are used to identify the effects of market power and long-lived assets on profits, as well as the sources of union-profit effects. The accumulated evidence rejects market power as a source of union-profit effects. While the case is not yet proven, there is some evidence in support of the appropriation of quasi-rent hypothesis. There is a clear need for further American and non-American primary research in this area.

The purpose of this study is to provide a systematic and quantitative review of the existing empirical evidence on the effects of unionization on overall job satisfaction. We conducted a meta‐regression analysis (MRA) with results from a pool of 235 estimates from 59 studies published between 1978 and 2015. The accumulated evidence indicates that unionization is negatively related to job satisfaction but is far from being conclusive. When primary studies control for endogeneity of union membership, the results of the MRA indicate that the difference in job satisfaction between unionized and non‐unionized workers disappears. These results suggest that reverse causation (i.e. dissatisfied workers are more likely to join a union) and time‐varying endogenous effects play a key role in explaining the relationship between unionization and job satisfaction.

This paper develops and applies several meta-analytic techniques to investigate the presence of publication bias in industrial relations research, specifically in the union-productivity effects literature. Publication bias arises when statistically insignificant results are suppressed or when results satisfying prior expectations are given preference. Like most fields, research in industrial relations is vulnerable to publication bias. Unlike other fields such as economics, there is no evidence of publication bias in the union-productivity literature, as a whole. However, there are pockets of publication selection, as well as negative autoregression, confirming the controversial nature of this area of research. Meta-regression analysis reveals evidence of publication bias (or selection) among U.S. studies.Quels sont les critères de sélection des études publiées ? Est-ce exclusivement la qualité de la recherche menée ? Si les travaux de recherches ont d’autant plus de chance d’être publiés que leurs résultats sont significatifs, alors on court le risque d’introduire un biais, appelé biais de publication. Un biais de publication peut apparaître lorsque la sélection des études s’opère sur le degré de significativité statistique des résultats ou lorsque les résultats confortent toujours les mêmes hypothèses théoriques. L’objectif principal des investigations empiriques consiste à renforcer une théorie en éliminant d’autres théories en concurrence. Malheureusement, les résultats empiriques peuvent ne pas refléter la réalité mais en donner une vision déformée en ne publiant que les travaux en faveur d’une théorie unique.Le problème du biais de publication a suscité l’intérêt de nombreux chercheurs, notamment en psychologie et en médecine (c.f. Begg et Berlin, 1988). Plus récemment, les économistes ont commencé à s’intéresser à cette question (Card et Krueger, 1995 ; Ashenfelter, Harmon et Oosterbeek, 1999 ; Gorg et Strobl, 2001) et ont montré que les revues en sciences sociales et économiques avaient également tendance à un certain degré de publication sélective. À notre connaissance, il n’existe pas d’études spécifiquement dédiées au problème du biais de publication dans le domaine des relations industrielles. Ceci est d’autant plus surprenant que ce champ d’étude est l’un des plus controversé en sciences sociales. De nombreux aspects du travail et de l’emploi sont fortement discutés par les chercheurs, à l’instar de l’impact économique du syndicalisme.Dès lors, l’objet de cet article est, d’une part, d’examiner l’existence et l’importance du biais de publication dans la littérature consacrée aux effets de la présence syndicale sur la productivité du travail et, d’autre part, de développer des outils d’investigation du biais de publication transposables dans le champ des relations industrielles.Le biais de publication. Le biais de publication est un phénomène qui désigne un ensemble de distorsions dans le processus de publication des résultats de travaux de recherche (Sutton et al., 2000b). Le biais de publication peu...

A number of contradictory theoretical hypotheses have been advanced about the relationship between unionisation and job satisfaction. In this article, new evidence of the effects of unionisation on job satisfaction is presented using French linked employer–employee data from the 2011 REPONSE Survey. A bivariate probit model is estimated to deal with the reverse causation issue that many previous studies have failed to account for. The results indicate that union members are less satisfied with their jobs than non‐members, even after taking into account certain individual characteristics, job attributes and workplace characteristics. However, after controlling for endogeneity of union membership, we find that the difference in job satisfaction between unionised and non‐unionised workers disappears because of a selection effect in workplaces covered only by a national/sectoral collective agreement and attributable to a causal effect arising from union's voice function in workplaces covered by a local agreement.

We use nationally representative workplace surveys to examine the relationship between unionization and workplace financial performance in Britain and France. We find that union bargaining is detrimental to workplace performance in both countries. However, in Britain the effect is confined to the declining proportion of unionized workplaces where there is active collective bargaining. In the French case, the effect is confined to the minority of cases where unions have high density and to unions with a reputation for militancy.

In this article, we re-examine the relationship between group-based profit sharing and productivity. Our meta-regression analysis of 355 estimates from 56 studies controls for publication selection and misspecification biases and investigates the impact of firm-level unionisation. Profit sharing is positively related to productivity on average, with a stronger relationship where there is higher unionisation. The positive effect of profit sharing on productivity is larger in cooperative firms and in transition economies. Separate meta-analysis of interactions suggests that profit sharing works better in combination with capital investment and employee participation in decisions.