Review of “New Evidence on the Effect of Right-To-Work Laws on Productivity and Population Growth” Introduction

Right to work laws allow workers to work in unionized workplaces without being union members or being required to pay union dues (National Right to Work, 2018). In right to work states, workers thus have the options of working in industries dominated by unions without having to feel that they must join the union to take a job in the field. The study by Hicks, LaFaive and Devaraj (2016) focuses on how right to work states promote population growth and productivity. This paper will summarize the article, discuss relevant points made by the authors, critique the article and apply the concepts presented in the article to the real world.

Summary of the Article

The article by Hicks et al. (2016) first provides a review of right to work literature and research to give the reader important background information. The researchers mainly focus on evaluating earlier research conducted by Hicks in order to expand on the information provided by the author in previous studies. Economic theory and right to work legislation are discussed in the next section along with the effect of right to work on productivity rates. The researchers examine empirical evidence to show a statistically significant correlation between right to work legislation and increased productivity and population growth in right to work states.

Relevant Points Made by the Author

The relevant points made by the authors are that right to work laws had the most economic impact in the time period from 1971 to 1990. From 1991 to 2013 there was still a significant impact on the economy but the results were not as impressive as they were in the 20 year period...

The main reason for the bigger impact in the 1970s and 1980s, the researchers argued, was that “during the beginning of the manufacturing employment stagnation (1971–90)” right to work had the biggest impact because workers were looking for new job opportunities as there were fewer of them to be found, and right to work laws allowed them to obtain jobs without having to join a union.
As Voss and Sherman (2000) show, some workers resist unions because they feel unions do not offer them a very significant organizing mechanism, do not necessarily negotiate in their best interests, do not want to pay union fees and dues, and so on. The primary reasons are economic and in an economic downturn it makes sense that workers would prefer to work without having to pay for representation, especially if they feel fully capable of negotiating for themselves on their own terms. What Hicks et al. (2016) show is that states where workers are empowered to choose whether they want to unionize or not to work a job have greater odds of increasing their population and productivity.

Critique of the Article

The article implicitly pushes the idea that correlation is the same as causation. They make the concluding statement that “the presence of an RTW law boosted state population growth by 1.1 percent to 1.5 percent” (Hicks et al., 2016, p. 118) between the years of 1971 and 2013—however, they did not test for causation but rather for correlation, so the statement is misleading at best and patently false at worst. Just because there is significant correlation between variables does not mean that the independent variable is the only variable impacting or having an effect on the dependent variable. The only to test for that kind of…