Study reveals how right-to-work laws impact store openings
A new study by Columbia Business School Professor Paul Ingram, Kravis Professor Business, Management and senior scholar at the Jerome A. Chazen Institute for International Business at Columbia Business School; Hayagreeva Rao, Atholl McBean Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resources, Stanford Graduate School of Business; and Qingyuan (Lori) Yue, Assistant Professor of Management and Organization, USC Marshall School of Business, found evidence of how firms engage in regulatory arbitrage and make decisions based on a state's regulatory policies. The study, which is featured in this month's American Sociological Review, flagship journal of the American Sociological Association (ASA), explored various states' right-to-work (RTW) laws and Walmart store openings between 1998 through 2005, and discovered that Walmart was more likely to propose and open new stores in RTW states located near the borders of non-RTW states, even in the face of protests.