GENDER DIFFERENCES IN DISPLACEMENT COST - EVIDENCE AND IMPLICATIONS

This paper uses a unique and newly available data set on displaced wor kers to estimate differences in the wage costs of displacement between women and men. While predisplacement wages rise at about the same rat e with tenure for women as men in this data set, women lose more from displacement than men, and the magnitude of this loss increases with t enure. Overall, we interpret our results as not supportive of the ''sp ecific capital'' hypothesis that women accumulate less firm-specific h uman capital than men and we suggest that future attempts to explain o ur result focus on gender differences in the process of search for a n ew job.