There is No Wealth like Knowledge: Correlation Between the Creations of State Duty-­to-­Bargain Laws Mandating Teachers’ Unionization in the 1970s and 1980s, And Log School District Input Levels

Abstract

A very controversial issue in education economics as well as the popular discourse is the effect of teachers’ unions on education in America. Using the tools of economic analysis, this study attempts to find the association between duty-to-bargain laws and levels of log school inputs. Past theories that assume teachers’ unions are powerful predict that the formation of teachers’ unions mandated by duty-­to-­ bargain laws passages results in increased total school resources per student. Using unbalanced panel data of independent school districts assembled from the NBER Collective Bargaining Law Dataset and the U.S. Census Bureau’s Censuses and Surveys of Government from 1972 to 2002 of 42 U.S. States, this study finds that there is a statistically significant decrease in total school district spending per pupil associated with state unionization events. The implications are then discussed from theoretical, policy, and future research viewpoints.