pscl (version 0.5)

unionDensity: cross national rates of trade union density

Description

Cross-national data on relative size of the trade unions and predictors, in 20 countries. Two of the predictors are highly collinear, and are the source of a debate between Stephens and Wallerstein (1991), later reviewed by Western and Jackman (1994).

Usage

data(unionDensity)

format

• union

{numeric, percentage of the total number of wage and salary earners plus the unemployed who are union members, measured between 1975 and 1980, with most of the data drawn from 1979} left{numeric, an index tapping the extent to which parties of the left have controlled governments since 1919, due to Wilensky (1981).} size{numeric, log of labor force size, defined as the number of wage and salary earners, plus the unemployed} concen{numeric, percentage of employment, shipments, or production accounted for by the four largest enterprises in a particular industry, averaged over industries (with weights proportional to the size of the industry) and the resulting measure is normalized such that the United States scores a 1.0, and is due to Pryor (1973). Some of the scores on this variable are imputed using procedures described in Stephens and Wallerstein (1991, 945).}

source

Pryor, Frederic. 1973. Property and Industrial Organization in Communist and Capitalist Countries. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Stephens, John and Micahel Wallerstein. 1991. "Industrial Concentration, Country Size and Trade Union Membership." American Political Science Review 85:941-953. Western, Bruce and Simon Jackman. 1994. "Bayesian Inference for Comparative Research." American Political Science Review 88:412-423. Wilensky, Harold L. 1981. "Leftism, Catholicism, Democratic Corporatism: The Role of Political Parties in Recemt Welfare State Development." In The Development of Welfare States in Europe and America, ed. Peter Flora and Arnold J. Heidenheimer. New Brunswick: Transaction Books.

Examples

data(unionDensity)
summary(unionDensity)
pairs(unionDensity,
      labels=c("Union
Density",
        "Left
Government",
        "log Size of
Labor Force",
        "Economic
Concentration"),
      lower.panel=function(x,y,digits=2){
        r <- cor(x,y)
        par(usr=c(0,1,0,1))
        text(.5,.5,
             format(c(r,0.123456789),digits=digits)[1],
             cex=1.5)
      }
      )
ols <- lm(union ~ left + size + concen,
          data=unionDensity)
summary(ols)