TY  - BOOK
AU  - Lee,David
AU  - Mas,Alexandre
ED  - National Bureau of Economic Research.
TI  - Long-Run Impacts of Unions on Firms: New Evidence from Financial Markets, 1961-1999 
T2  - NBER working paper series
PY  - 2009///
CY  - Cambridge, Mass.
PB  - National Bureau of Economic Research
N1  - February 2009; Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers
N2  - We estimate the effect of new unionization on firms' equity value over the 1961-1999 period using a newly assembled sample of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) representation elections matched to stock market data. Event-study estimates show an average union effect on the equity value of the firm equivalent to a cost of at least $40,500 per unionized worker. At the same time, point estimates from a regression-discontinuity design -- comparing the stock market impact of close union election wins to close losses -- are considerably smaller and close to zero. We find a negative relationship between the cumulative abnormal returns and the vote share in support of the union, allowing us to reconcile these seemingly contradictory findings. Using the magnitudes from the analysis, we calibrate a structural "median voter" model of endogenous union determination in order to conduct counterfactual policy simulations of policies that would marginally increase the ease of unionization
UR  - https://www.nber.org/papers/w14709
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w14709
ER  -