Unionism and Income An analysis of the Right to work laws on wage dispersion in the United States

Abstract: In this thesis, I investigate the effect of introducing Right-to-work laws on wages and the dispersion of wages in the United States, using a staggered Difference in Difference model pioneered by Callaway & Sant’Anna (2021) on wages and individual wage quantiles. Introducing Right-to-work laws appear to have a generally positive effect on wages and wage dispersion for all wages. The effects are heterogeneous by state and gender, however, most of the significant values for the lower wage levels appear to be increasing. There might be several plausible explanations for the effects observed, however, the notion that Right-to-work laws lower the threat effect significantly, or that this effect has a large and broad influence, is not observed.