School board politics, school district size, and the bargaining power of teachers’ unions

This paper presents a public choice theory of the bargaining power of teachers’ unions. The theory predicts that the power of the unions rises with the size of a district. The theory is tested by examining the relationship between district size and various bargaining outcomes for a sample of 771 California school districts in 1999–2000. As hypothesized, teachers’ salaries rise and the ratio of teachers per pupil falls with increasing district size. The paper also considers several alternative explanations for these results.