Working Paper: NBER ID: w8993
Authors: John DiNardo; David S. Lee
Abstract: Using data on more than 27,000 establishments (1983-1999) in the United States, this paper produces estimates of the causal effect of unionization of employer closure by exploiting the fact that most employers become 'unionized' as a partial consequence of a secret ballot election among the workers. If employers where unions barely won the election (e.g. by one vote) are ex ante comparable in all other ways to employers where unions barely lost (by one vote), differences in their subsequent outcomes should represent the true impact of union recognition. The regression discontinuity analysis finds little or no union effect on short- and long-run employer survival rates over 1- to 18-year horizons. We thus conclude that evidence of large effects of unions would more likely be found 1) along the within-employer (intensive margin) of employment and/or 2) in analyses of union threat effects.
Keywords: unionization; establishment closure; regression discontinuity; labor economics
JEL Codes: J0; J2; J5; C1; C5
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Unionization (J51) | Establishment Closure (J63) |
| Establishments with narrow union wins (J51) | Survival Rate (C41) |
| Establishments with narrow union losses (J51) | Survival Rate (C41) |
| Unionization (J51) | Employer Survival Rates (J63) |
| Unionization Effects (J51) | Establishment Closure (J63) |