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Case StudiesCase Studies
LABOR MARKETS AND LABOR UNIONS

Case Study 12.1: Winner-Take-All Labor Markets

Each year Forbes magazine lists the multimillion-dollar earnings of top entertainers and professional athletes.

Oprah Winfrey has made that list each year for more than two decades. Her annual income adds up. With wealth

now in the billions, she ranks among the world’s richest people. Entertainment and pro sports have come to

be called winner-take-all labor markets because a few key individuals critical to the overall success of an
enterprise are richly rewarded. For example, the credits at the end of a movie list a hundred or more people directly

involved in the production. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, more work behind the scenes. Despite a huge cast

and crew, the difference between a movie’s fi nancial success and failure depends primarily on the performance of just a few critical people—

the screenwriter, the director, and the lead actors. The same happens in sports. In professional golf tournaments, attendance and TV ratings are

signifi cantly higher with Tiger Woods in the mix. In professional basketball, LeBron James has been credited with fi lling once-empty seats and

boosting the value of his team by $160 million. Thus, top performers generate a high marginal revenue product.

But high productivity alone is not enough. To be paid anywhere near their marginal revenue product, there must be an open competition

for top performers. This bids up pay, such as the $20 million per movie garnered by top stars—about 2,000 times the average annual acting

earnings of Screen Actors Guild members. Simon Cowell reportedly earned $36 million judging American Idol in his fi nal contract year; he was

expected to leave that show to develop a new one that could earn him twice as much. In professional sports, before the free-agency rule was

introduced (which allows players to seek the highest bidder), top players couldn’t move on their own from team to team. They were stuck with

the team that drafted them, earning only a fraction of their marginal revenue product.

Relatively high pay in entertainment and sports is not new. What is new is the spread of winner-take-all to other U.S. markets. The “star”

treatment now extends to such fi elds as management, law, banking, fi nance, even academia. Consider, for example, corporate pay. In 1980,

the chief executive offi cers (CEOs) of the 200 largest U.S. corporations earned about about 42 times more than the average production worker.

Now, this multiple tops 200. Comparable multiples are much lower in Germany and Japan. Why the big U.S. jump?

First, the U.S. economy has grown sharply in recent decades and is by far the largest in the world—with output equaling that of the next

three economies combined. So U.S. businesses serve a wider market, making the CEO potentially more productive and more valuable. Second,

breakthroughs in communications, production, and transportation mean that a well-run U.S. company can now usually sell a valued product

around the world. Third, wider competition for the top people has increased their pay. For example, in the 1970s, U.S. businesses usually hired

CEOs from company ranks, promoting mainly from within (a practice still common today in Germany and Japan). Because other fi rms were not

trying to bid away the most talented executives, companies were able to retain them for just a fraction of the

pay that now prevails in a more competitive market. Today top executives are often drawn from outside the

fi rm—even outside the industry and the country. Fourth, although CEO pay has increased more than sixfold

on average since 1980, so has the stock market value of the corporations they run. Fifth, a study of 732

fi rms in the United States, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom found that U.S. fi rms on average are

more effi cient than those in the other countries. One fi nal reason why top CEO pay has increased in America

is that high salaries are more socially acceptable here than they once were. High pay is still frowned on in

some countries, such as Japan and Germany.

Some top executives are no doubt paid more than they are worth, but nobody claims the market for

resources works perfectly. The claim is that an open competition for resources will tend to offer the most to

those resources contributing the most. And in those cases where marginal productivity is huge, so is the pay.

SOURCES: Nicholas Bloom and John Van Reenan, “Measuring and Explaining Management Practices Across Firms and Countries,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 122 (November
2007): 1351–1408. Bill Livingston, “LeBron,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 6 May 2007; “Paula Abdul Stays Focussed on Her Craft,” The Los Angeles Times, 5 May 2009. Urs Fischbacher
and Christian Thoni, “Winner Take All Markets Are Ineffi cient,” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization,” 67 (July 2008): 150–163; Xavier Gabaix and Augustin Landier, “Why
Has CEO Pay Increased So Much,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123 (February 2008): 49–100. Economic Report of the President, February 2010, at http://www.gpoaccess.
gov/eop/.

QUESTION
1. What characterizes a winner-take-all labor market? Offer some reasons why corporate heads now earn much more than they did in the

1970s.

winner-take-all
labor markets
markets in which a few
key employees critical
to the overall success
of an enterprise are
richly rewarded

12

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Case Study 12.2: Federal Bailout of GM, Chrysler, and the UAW

In the 1970s, the United Auto Workers (UAW) negotiated what have been called “gold-plated benefi ts” for their workers and retirees. General

Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, the so-called Big Three, believed that because they dominated the U.S. auto market and because they all faced the

same labor costs, any higher costs could simply be passed along to car buyers. What could go wrong? Well, what went wrong was an onslaught

of fi erce competition from foreign automakers who would develop a reputation for high quality at competitive prices. These foreign automakers

also began building plants in the United States operated by mostly nonunion workers. Pay and benefi ts for these nonunion workers, while still

attractive, amounted to about three quarters of what UAW workers were getting (and UAW pay was double what average Americans earned).

Not only were UAW wages higher, but union work rules—some 5,000 pages detailing what each worker could and could not be asked to

do—imposed expensive ineffi ciencies on production. If work rules were violated, a union representative could shut down the assembly line.

General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, were making costly vehicles that not enough people wanted to buy, and the companies were losing money

by the truckload. GM, for example, lost over $60 billion between 2005 and 2008. Hard hit by fallout from the global fi nancial crisis of 2008 and

facing bankruptcy, the Big Three turned to the federal government for help. After some UAW pressure and political wrangling, federal offi cials

agreed on a bailout of about $85 billion, with most of that going to GM (Ford ultimately decided not to accept federal aid).

The agreement called for GM and Chrysler to fi le for bankruptcy. By doing so, both companies were able to walk away from huge debt

burdens built up from years of making costly products that didn’t sell well enough. Those who had owned the companies, the stockholders, got

wiped out in the bankruptcy—they got nothing. Bondholders and other creditors also took a beating—they would get back less than a third

of what they had lent the automakers. Some suppliers were also left hanging and many dealerships were shut down. The group that benefi ted

most from the bailout was UAW workers. They ended up owning 10 percent of the

new GM and a majority of the new Chrysler. In years leading up to the bailout, many

workers had taken buyouts, meaning that the company paid them a chunk of money

to leave their jobs. The union also made some concessions, but mostly on the pay

and benefi ts of workers hired in the future. Existing workers gave up little in the

bailout agreement—certainly little compared to the drubbing suffered by company

stockholders, creditors, suppliers, and car dealers.

The new GM emerged from bankruptcy with the federal government owning 61

percent in return for its $43 billion “investment.” Much of the federal bailout money

would be used to buy out existing workers and shore up the health care fund for

union retirees. The Big Three are hoping to hire new workers at lower wages, but

recently-laid-off workers still have fi rst claim on any job openings, and they must be

rehired at their previous high wages, not the lower wages to be paid new workers.

The Congressional Budget Offi ce estimated that the government bailout would ultimately cost taxpayers $34 billion. That translates into

$300 per U.S. household to support the pay and benefi ts of those making twice what average American workers earn. We can’t necessarily

blame the UAW for the demise of the American auto industry. Demanding higher pay, better benefi ts, and more restrictive work rules sounds

like the job description of union representatives. But we can blame the managements for going along with these demands. Top auto executives

lost their jobs in the bankruptcy. UAW workers gave up little in the bankruptcy.

In today’s competitive marketplace, only an effi cient, fl exible work force will thrive. Technology advances too rapidly to drag along wages

that exceed the market rate and featherbedding work rules that slow down production.

SOURCES: David Leonhardt, “$73 an Hour: Adding It Up,” New York Times, 10 December 2008; Jonathan Welsh, “General Motors Says It Repaid Bailout. Not True, Says Watchdog
Group,” Wall Street Journal, 4 May 2010; Nick Bunkley, “Progress for Automakers After Losses,” New York Times, 21 April 2010; and Bill Koenig, “Unions Resist Yielding More as
GM, Ford, Chrysler Seek Aid,” Bloomberg, 12 November 2009.

QUESTION
1. How would the UAW benefi t for increased demand for GM and Chrysler vehicles?

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What is the price of an hour of leisure? An hour of nonmarket work? What does it mean to say that leisure is a normal good? Why doesn’t the market supply curve for labor bend backward?

If work provides disutility, why do people ever engage in either market work or nonmarket work?

What can cause the demand for a resource to shift?

What does it mean to say that the demand for a resource is a derived demand? Why does the supply curve of a resource slope upward?

Why does the division of resource earnings into economic rent and opportunity costs depend on the resource owner’s elasticity of supply?

Your response should be at least 75 words in length. You are required to use at least your textbook as source material for your response. All sources used, including the textbook, must be referenced; paraphrased and quoted material must have accompanying citations.

McEachern, W. A. (2012). ECON Micro 3 (3rd ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western.