This article explores the question of whether unionization influences the decision of a firm to merge with another firm. We combine merger data, taken from COMPUSTAT, with firm-specific union data obtained from several sources. An econometric matching model allows us to isolate the effects of...

This paper summarizes recent empirical work on displaced workers. Although widely distributed, displacement is strongly counter cyclical and concentrated in less-educated occupations and in industries and states doing relatively poorly. There has been a shift toward plant closings and more...

This paper explores the question of whether unionization influences the decision of a firm to merge with another firm. We combine merger data, taken from COMPUSTAT, with firm-specific union data obtained from several sources. An econometric matching model allows us to isolate the effects of...

This paper investigates the extent to which people spend careers on minimum wage jobs. We find that a small but non-trivial number of NLSY respondents spend 25%, 50%, or even 75% of the first ten years of their career on minimum or near-minimum wage jobs. Workers with these minimum wage careers...

The earnings of workers are reduced for many years after being displaced from their jobs, and those workers and their families face increased risk of other problems as well. The ills suffered by displaced workers motivated several recent expansions of government programs, including the...

This article uses a two-industry model of unemployment duration and job search to estimate rates of transition of displaced workers from unemployment to employment, distinguishing between employment in a worker's previous industry and in other industries. The competing-risks model allows...

This study simultaneously estimates the likelihoods that a worker receives advance notice of a plant closing and that a notified worker quits the job before its scheduled end. The author finds that fear of early attrition is a significant determinant of a firm's decision to provide advance...

The author analyzes job search behavior of unemployed workers who may search for work in several sectors of the economy. Although reservation wages are equal in each sector, workers search more intensively in sectors with lower layoff rates. Thus workers more quickly find and accept jobs with...