Academic Unions in Higher Education

In their appraisal of our 1980 article, Brown and Stone make the following claims: (1) we failed to adduce any evidence or argument suggesting that the empirical results and conclusions in their Economic Inquiry article are incorrect, (2) we failed to produce any basis for declaring their methodological criticisms of Morgan and Kearney are logically invalid, and (3) we fell prey to the post hoc ergo propter hoc argument. In this paper, we shall first respond to the second and third issues raised by Brown and Stone. Clearly, our 1980 article was an attempt to explain the discrepancies between the Morgan and Kearney (1977) and Brown and Stone (1977) results and was not meant as a direct criticism of the Brown and Stone Economic Inquiry article. However, in preparing the rejoinder to the Brown and Stone criticisms we obtained additional results which indicate that even more fundamental factors are involved in the dispute. Ironically, these results relate to methodological deficiencies in the Brown and Stone study. Specifically, it will be shown that the Brown and Stone methodology does not measure what it purports to measure and does not test the hypothesis it claims to test. In fact, the Brown and Stone procedure, by nature of its design, is likely to reject the hypothesis that collective bargaining generates compensation gains (that would otherwise not occur in its absence) even if such gains existed. Moreover, it is shown that the probability of such a rejection increases with the length of the time horizon

Argument (complex analysis) · Criticism · Economics · Epistemology · Fell · Law and economics · Political science · Positive economics · Post hoc · Sociology · Test (biology) · Corporate Finance and Governance · Economic Theory and Institutions · Law · Philosophy · Taxation and Legal Issues

• Unionism and relative wages in the United States

  H Gregg Lewis•Unionism and relative wages in…•1963

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• Compensation Gains in Higher Education

  Henry Ito, Michael Masoner•Sociology of Education•1980

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