Replication Data for: Public-Sector Unions and the Size of Government

Public-sector unions are generally thought to increase the size of government through collective bargaining. This paper challenges this idea for the case of teacher unions in the U.S., and argues that while collective bargaining institutions sometimes lead to increased education spending, this is not the norm. Using a new longitudinal dataset spanning all states before and after they granted collective bargaining rights to teachers, the paper shows that although states that mandate districts to bargain with teachers have higher education expenditures than states that do not, the differences precede collective bargaining. Difference-in-differences analyses find no evidence that introducing collective bargaining rights led to average increases in the level of resources devoted to education. While existing theories cannot explain these null findings, the paper shows one reason behind them is that most laws granting collective bargaining rights to teachers were not unambiguously pro-labor, but included both pro- and anti-union provisions.