This edited volume consists of fourteen separately authored chapters dealing from an international perspective with various dimensions of trade unionism. Among the specific areas covered are the determinants of trade union membership; models of union behavior; bargaining; strikes; union effects on wages, wage structures, productivity, financial performance of firms, macroeconomic performance, and innovation in firms; and political dimensions of unions. Also included are some in-depth analyses of industrial relations and union developments in two key countries—the United States and the United Kingdom—and across several countries of continental Europe. The authors, who are noted scholars from a variety of countries with expertise on unions and industrial relations, have produced a much-needed synthesis of the empirical research on unions. Most of the articles approach the analysis of union behavior and outcomes from the perspective of economics. This orientation is especially appropriate in the studies’ treatment of empirical evidence. The chapters are very thorough syntheses and critical analyses of empirical findings on unions. I believe that the discussion of theories and models of union behavior would have benefited from more extensive presentation of theoretical perspectives from other disciplines. Still, notwithstanding the volume’s mainly economic focus, several aspects of unionism are explicitly approached from an interdisciplinary perspective, and many articles account for institutional considerations. Notable among these chapters are ones devoted to political and industrial relations developments associated with trade unions. The great strength of the volume is that it provides a thorough set of analyses of the extant empirical evidence regarding union effects. The evidence is carefully examined and synthesized and the reader is left with a clear sense of what we know and what we do not know about “what unions do.” The chapters, taken together, cover all the main areas of academic research on union effects, including bargaining, strikes, wages and wage structures, productivity, economic performance, and innovation. In some cases, the studies also provide fresh empirical evidence, and most of them offer new insights into trade unions. In a number of the chapters, the reviews of empirical evidence also span a fairly broad set of countries. To varying degrees across chapters, the studies explain the main theoretical models for considering union effects in an accessible manner and in ways that place the empirical evidence in context. Another strength of the volume is two chapters that cover industrial relations and unionism in considerable depth—one on the United Kingdom, by John Addison and Stanley Siebert, and the other on the United States, by John Delaney. Both studies represent major contributions to our understanding of the main factors affecting trade unions and the current state and future prospects of unions in these two countries. These studies are also important because they include analyses of institutional considerations affecting trade unions. The United Kingdom and United States warrant examination in great depth because their union movements date back to the formative years of industrial development, have had significant effects domestically, and have also had a formative impact on trade unionism in other countries.

If the volume’s strength lies largely in the thoroughness with which it surveys trade unionism and industrial relations developments in Western industrialized countries—the United States, the United Kingdom and, to some extent, Europe—its major shortcoming is its lack of similar attention to other …