Friday, October 31, 2025
12:00pm - 2:00pm
Rutgers Club, Livingston Campus
Lunch provided, RSVP to Mingwei Liu at mingwei@smlr.rutgers.edu
Abstract
We study the role of union heterogeneity in shaping wages and inequality among unionized workers. Using linked employer-employee data from Brazil and job moves across multi-firm unions, we estimate over 4,800 union-specific pay premia. Unions explain 3–4% of earnings variation. While unions raise wages on average, the standard deviation in union effects is large (6-7%). Validating our approach, wages fall in markets with higher vs. lower union premia following a nationwide right-to-work law. Linking premia to detailed data on union attributes, we find that unions with strike activity, collective bargaining agreements, internal competition, and skilled leaders secure higher wages. High-premium unions compress wage gaps by education while the average union exacerbates them. Post right-to-work, however, worker support for high-premium unions falls when between-group bargaining differentials are large. Our findings show that unions are not a monolith—their structure and actions shape their wage effects and, consequently, worker support.
About Our Speaker
Ellora Derenoncourt is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Princeton University, a member of the Industrial Relations Section of Princeton Economics, and the founding director of the Program for Research on Inequality at Princeton Economics. She works on labor economics, economic history, and the study of inequality. Recently she has studied the long-run evolution of racial inequality in the US and the effect of labor market institutions on low wage workers. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 2019.
