Introduction

Abstract

There are two interesting, but somewhat conflicting, trends relating to trade unions over the past three decades. The first is that there has been an extraordinary expansion of the economic analysis of trade unions, as Booth (1995) correctly describes. The second, however, is that the participation rate in trade union memberships in advanced countries has been in a decreasing trend, as many authors point out. Is the real economy and the interest of professional economists moving in different directions? This proposition is somewhat similar to the question of the famous chicken and egg problem.