TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bell,Linda A.
AU  - Neumark,David
TI  - Lump-Sums, Profit Sharing, and the Labor Costs in the Union Sector
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 3630
PY  - 1991
Y2  - February 1991
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3630
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3630.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Linda Bell
E-Mail: lbell@haverford.edu

David Neumark
Department of Economics
University of California at Irvine
3151 Social Science Plaza
Irvine, CA  92697
Tel: 949-824-8496
Fax: 949/824-2182
E-Mail: dneumark@uci.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 1991-09-01
AB  - This paper documents the increase in the use of lump-sum payments and profit sharing plans in union contracts in the 1980s, and evaluates the extent to which these innovations may have contributed to moderation in the growth of labor costs, and increased pay flexibility. We find evidence that lump-sum and profit sharing arrangements reduced labor cost growth at both the aggregate and firm level. But the evidence linking these plans to labor cost flexibility is mixed; although the evidence suggests that profit sharing plans may be associated with greater flexibility at the firm level, there is no evidence that lump-sum plans increase flexibility at either the firm or aggregate level.
ER  -