Handbook Chapters

Gender and Collaboration with Lorenzo Ductor and Sanjeev Goyal
Chapter in Women in Economics A CEPR Vox eBook, edited by Shelly Lundberg 2020

Religious and Cultural Leaders
Chapter in Advances in the Economics of Religion, Palgrave Macmillan 2019

Working Papers

An Organizational Theory of Unionization‍ with Francesco Squintani
Motivated by the recent surge in union drives in the United States, we present a first theoretical model of unionization, succinctly capturing the regulations governing the unionization process. We argue that unionization in the U.S. is essentially an informational problem: workers must vote on whether to unionize without knowing the benefits and costs ex ante. If unionization benefits workers, we show that campaigns are more likely to succeed when organizers are credible. Credibility depends on organizers notbeing excessively pro-union biased and/or on bearing organizational costs. Hence, we explain why grassroots action is often more effective at unionizing workplaces than professional campaigning. We find that the likelihood of unionization is non-monotonic in organizational costs: When such costs are low, firms that target organizers may unintentionally increase the likelihood of unionization. More broadly, our paper contributes to the still underdeveloped study of political organization design by developing a theory of unions as organizations and showing how organizer selection and incentives shape unionization outcomes.
Additional Mathematica Files: Equilibrium Characterization, Comparative Statics Interior, Comparative Statics b0, Comparative Statics b1