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 inferences about search strategies to be drawn from data concerning employment outcomes and allows tests of some fundamental implications of search theory. There is evidence that improvements in the prospects for employment in their previous industry induce displaced workers to reduce search intensity or increase reservation wages in other industries.

Using data on union certification elections, we estimate the impact of unionization on firms' investment behavior. Employing both a standard q model and an “investment surprises” technique, we find that union certification significantly reduces investment in the year following the election. We find that a winning certification election has, on average, about the same effect on investment in the year following the event as would—given the elasticity measures taken from the public finance literature—a 33 percentage‐point increase in the corporate tax. The magnitude of the response in years further away from the election is less certain.