'Labor Market Tightness and Union Activity' (AsPredicted #136435)
Author(s) This pre-registration is currently anonymous to enable blind peer-review. It has 3 authors.
Pre-registered on 06/22/2023 01:10 AM (PT)
1) Have any data been collected for this study already? No, no data have been collected for this study yet.
2) What's the main question being asked or hypothesis being tested in this study? We provide participants with information about the probability of finding a new job within three months after layoff among workers similar to them and study effects on their own beliefs about finding a job after a layoff as well as their willingness to support union activities.
3) Describe the key dependent variable(s) specifying how they will be measured. Intended Labor Market Behaviors:
- Probability of voting "yes" in union election
- Probability of making vote public
- Probability of organizing union election
- Probability of participating in strikes
- Probability of looking for a new job
Real Outcomes:
- Pro-union sentiment in message to co-workers
- Effort put into message to co-workers about unionization (word count)
We also plan to construct a combined measure of union activity outcomes.
4) How many and which conditions will participants be assigned to? There will be two groups that respondents are randomly assigned to:
- Treatment group: Respondents receive information about the probability of finding a new job within three months after layoff for people similar to them
- Control group: Does not receive information
5) Specify exactly which analyses you will conduct to examine the main question/hypothesis. We estimate the following specification with OLS:
- Y_i is the outcome of interest
- Treatment_i takes value 1 for respondents in the treatment group that receive information about the probability of finding a new job within three months after layoff for people similar to them and zero otherwise
- Misperception_i is the difference between the probability that we estimated based on CPS data and the respondent i's pre-treatment belief about the
probability of finding a new job within three months after layoff
- The coefficient \gamma captures the effect of our information treatment as a function of the respondent's pre-treatment misperception
We will also analyze the relationship between beliefs about tightness and unionization in a 2SLS framework
- First stage: The endogenous independent variable is the post-treatment belief about the probability of finding a new job within 3 months after layoff
- Second stage: We regress intended labor market behaviors as well as real outcomes on post-treatment beliefs about the probability of finding a new job
within three months, instrumented with the treatment indicator and the interaction between the treatment indicator and pre-treatment misperceptions
6) Describe exactly how outliers will be defined and handled, and your precise rule(s) for excluding observations. Conditional on consenting to participate, respondents will complete a background survey that allows us to screen out
- Self-employed or small business owners
- Unemployed
- Students
- Retirees
- Workers in the public sector
- People aged below 18 or above 65
- Those living outside the U.S.
- C-level Managers
Our survey also includes two attention checks, and we plan to screen out those who do not pass at least one of these checks. We also plan to handle outliers by winsorizing our survey data and exclude "speeders" from our analyses.
7) How many observations will be collected or what will determine sample size? No need to justify decision, but be precise about exactly how the number will be determined. We recruit respondents through the survey company Sago, aiming for 5000 to 6000 observations. The precise number of participants will depend on the
exact response rate of panelists invited to our study.
8) Anything else you would like to pre-register? (e.g., secondary analyses, variables collected for exploratory purposes, unusual analyses planned?) We also plan to conduct a heterogeneity analysis based on income.
