INDUSTRY-SPECIFIC HUMAN-CAPITAL - EVIDENCE FROM DISPLACED WORKERS

Results from the Displaced Worker Surveys show that the wage cost of s witching industries following displacement is strongly correlated with predisplacement measures of both work experience and tenure. Workers apparently receive compensation for some skills that are neither compl etely general nor firm-specific but rather specific to their industry or line of work. Further, among displaced workers who find new jobs in their predisplacement industry, postdisplacement returns to predispla cement job tenure resemble cross-section estimates of the returns to c urrent seniority. This suggests that firm-specific factors may contrib ute little to the observed slope of wage tenure profiles.