3470073
On-the-Job Search, Productivity Shocks, and the Individual Earnings Process
Individual labor earnings observed in worker panel data have complex, highly persistent dynamics. We investigate the capacity of a structural job search model with i.i.d. productivity shocks to replicate salient properties of these dynamics, such as the covariance structure of earnings, the evolution of individual earnings mean and variance with the duration of uninterrupted employment, or the distribution of year-to-year earnings changes. Specifically, we show within an otherwise standard job search model how the combined assumptions of on-the-job search and wage renegotiation by mutual consent act as a quantitatively plausible ``internal propagation mechanism'' of i.i.d. productivity shocks into persistent wage shocks. The model suggests that wage dynamics should be thought of as the outcome of a specific acceptance/rejection scheme of i.i.d. productivity shocks. This offers an alternative to the conventional linear ARMA-type approach to modelling earnings dynamics. Structural estimation of our model on a 10-year panel of highly educated British workers shows that our simple framework produces a dynamic earnings structure which is remarkably consistent with the data
6870338
On the Covariance Structure of Earnings and Hours Changes
This paper presents an empirical analysis of changes in individual earnings and hours over time. Using longitudinal data from three panel surveys,we catalogue the main features of the covariance structure of changes in earnings and hours. We then present an interpretation of these features in terms of both a life-cycle labor supply model and a fixed-wage labor contract model. Our major findings are:(1) there is a remarkable similarity in the covariance structure of earnings and hours changes across the three surveys; and (2) apart from simple measurement error, the major component of variance in earnings and hours affects earnings and hours equi-proportionately.
153932128
Dynamic Aspects of Earnings Mobility
This paper proposes an econometric methodology to deal with life cycle earnings and mobility among discrete earnings classes. First, we use panel data on male log earnings to estimate an earnings function with permanent and serially correlated transitory components due to both measured and unmeasured variables. Assuming that the error components are normally distributed, we develop statements for the probability that an individual's earnings will fall into a particular but arbitrary time sequence of poverty states. Using these statements, we illustrate the implications of our earnings model for poverty dynamics and compare our approach to Markov chain models of income mobility.
121211590
The use of time series processes to model the error structure of earnings in a longitudinal data analysis
Abstract This study presents an error structure that offers a rich statistical framework for panel data analysis. It includes as special cases most of the error specifications found in longitudinal studies of wages and earnings. A general set of procedures for choosing a specification of this error structure and estimating its parameters appears in the first part of this study. The last section applies these procedures to fit an error structure for wages and earnings of prime-age males using data from the Michigan Panel of Income Dynamics.
154964987
Growth-Rate Heterogeneity and the Covariance Structure of Life-Cycle Earnings
Using U.S. panel data on adult males, I compare the "profile heterogeneity model" of earnings dynamics, in which the earnings/experience profile varies across individuals, to a competing model in which earnings "has a unit root." The latter specification enjoys increasing popularity among researchers. My analysis questions this favor, suggesting the profile heterogeneity model provides a more consistent representation of the data. I also provide new estimates of the variation in earnings growth rates. Previous evidence is from relatively unrepresentative samples. Individuals one standard deviation above the mean enjoy a 20%-30% earnings advantage in just 10 years.
55618317
Modelling income processes with lots of heterogeneity
All empirical models of earnings processes in the literature assume a good deal of homogeneity. In contrast to this we model earnings processes allowing for lots of heterogeneity between agents. We also introduce an extension to the linear ARMA model that allows that the initial convergence to the long run may be different from that implied by the conventional ARMA model. This is particularly important for unit root tests which are actually tests of a composite of two independent hypotheses. We fit our models to a variety of statistics including most of those considered by previous investigators. We use a sample drawn from the PSID, and focus on white males with a high school degree. Despite this observable homogeneity we find much greater latent heterogeneity than previous investigators. We show that allowance for heterogeneity makes substantial differences to estimates of model parameters and to outcomes of interest. Additionally we find strong evidence against the hypothesis that any worker has a unit root.
54077843
Consumption Inequality and Income Uncertainty
This paper places the debate over using consumption or income in studies of inequality growth in a formal intertemporal setting. It highlights the importance of permanent and transitory income uncertainty in the evaluation of growth in consumption inequality. We derive conditions under which the growth of variances and covariances of income and consumption can be used to separately identify the growth in the variance of permanent and transitory income shocks.Household data from the United Kingdom for the period 1968-1992 are used to show a strong growth in transitory inequality towards the end of this period while younger cohorts are shown to face significantly higher levels of permanent inequality.
8057807
Income Variance Dynamics and Heterogeneity
Recent theoretical work has shown the importance of measuring microeconomic uncertainty for models of both general and partial equilibrium under imperfect insurance. In this Paper the assumption of i.i.d. income innovations used in previous empirical studies is removed and the focus of the analysis placed on models for the conditional variance of income shocks, which is related to the measure of risk emphasized by the theory. We first discriminate amongst various models of earnings determination that separate income shocks into idiosyncratic transitory and permanent components. We allow for education- and time-specific differences in the stochastic process for earnings and for measurement error. The conditional variance of the income shocks is modelled as a parsimonious ARCH process with both observable and unobserved heterogeneity. The empirical analysis is conducted on data drawn from the 1967-92 Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We find strong evidence of sizeable ARCH effects as well as evidence of unobserved heterogeneity in the variances.
153449126
Contracts, hold-up and labor markets
The implications for labor markets of contracts to avoid hold-up of investments are assessed. Employment at will protects the returns on a firm's general and specific investments without wages increasing with tenure. With turnover costs, fixed but renegotiable wages can protect general investments by both firm and employee, and generage wage stickiness without adversely affecting employment. Employment contracts that induce efficient specific investments by both firm and employee are problematic so it makes sense, wherever possible, for one side to make all such investments. With private information, fixed wages may induce fewer inefficient separations than employment at will.
167733385
Individual employment contracts
This chapter reviews recent developments in the study of individual employment contracts. It discusses three reasons for an employer and an employee to have a contract: (i) to allocate risk in a way different from a spot market; (2) to enhance the efficiency of investment decisions by protecting the return on investments made by one party from being captured by the other; and (3) to motivate the employee by making compensation depend on performance. The main emphasis is on issues that arise from the problems of enforcing contracts in practice and from renegotiation by mutual agreement.
153670828
Wage Determination and Efficiency in Search Equilibrium
Using a simple search technology and the Nash bargaining solution, the paper derives the steady state equilibrium negotiated wage as a function of the equilibrium unemployment and vacancy rates. For this wage, the lifetime expected present discounted value of earnings of a new worker is compared with the social marginal product of a new worker. These are not generally equal implying inefficient incentives for labour mobility.
55180613
Job Creation and Job Destruction in the Theory of Unemployment
In this paper we model a job-specific shock process in the matching model of unemployment with non-cooperative wage behaviour. We obtain endogenous job creation and job destruction processes and study their properties. We show that an aggregate shock induces negative correlation between job creation and job destruction whereas a dispersion shock induces positive correlations. The job destruction process is shown to have more volatile dynamics than the job creation process. In simulations we show that an aggregate shock process proxies reasonably well the cyclical behaviour of job creation and job destruction in the United States.
154630719
Equilibrium Unemployment Theory
Part 1 Unemployment in the model of balanced growth: the labour market long-run equilibrium and balanced growth adjustment dynamics. Part 2 further ananlysis of the labour market: search intensity and job advertising.
15048219
Optimal Severance Pay in a Matching Model
This paper uses an equilibrium matching framework to study jointly the optimal private provision of severance pay and the allocational and welfare consequences of government intervention in excess of private arrangements. Firms insure risk-averse workers by means of simple explicit employment contracts. Contracts can be renegotiated ex post by mutual consent. It is shown that the privately optimal severance payment is bounded below by the fall in lifetime wealth associated with job loss. Simulations show that, despite contract incompleteness, legislated dismissal costs largely in excess of such private optimum are effectively undone by renegotiation and have only a small allocational effect. Welfare falls. Yet, for deviations from laissez faire in line with those observed for most OECD countries, the welfare loss is small.
14600128
Estimating Models of On-the-Job Search Using Record Statistics
This paper proposes a methodology for estimating job search models that does not require either functional form assumptions or ruling out the presence of unobserved variation in worker ability. In particular, building on existing results from record-value theory, a branch of statistics that deals with the timing and magnitude of extreme values in sequences of random variables, I show how we can use wage data to identify the distribution from which workers search. Applying this insight to wage data in the NLSY dataset, I show that the data supports the hypothesis that the wage offer distribution is Pareto, but not that it is lognormal.
152284374
The Effect of Implicit Contracts on the Movement of Wages Over the Business Cycle: Evidence from Micro Data
In this paper we address the question of whether wages are affected by labor market conditions in a manner more consistent with a contract approach than with a standard spot market model. From a simple implicit contract model, we derive implications about the links between wages and past labor market conditions. Using individual data from the Current Population Survey and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we find that an implicit contract model with costless mobility describes these links better than either a simple spot market model or an implicit contract model with costly mobility.
155027027
Wage Differentials, Employer Size, and Unemployment
The unique equilibrium solution to a game in which a continuum of individual employers choose permanent wage offers and a continuum of workers search by sequentially sampling from the set of offers is characterized. Wage dispersion is a robust outcome provided that workers search while employed as well as when unemployed. The unique nondegenerate equilibrium distribution of wage offers is constructed for three cases: (1) identical workers and employers, (2) identical employers and an atomless distribution of worker supply prices, and (3) identical workers and an atomless distribution of job productivities. Copyright 1998 by Economics Department of the University of Pennsylvania and the Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association.
153597630
Investments, Holdup, and the Form of Market Contracts.
The authors analyze incomplete contracts to induce efficient investment. With exogenous switching costs, fixed-price contracts are efficient, generate some rigidity in prices, are renegotiated intermittently by possibly small amounts, and when inflation is positive, generate asymmetric responses to shocks, all consistent with evidence on prices and wages. With two-sided specific investments, efficiency requires prices to have sufficient escalator clauses to avoid renegotiation, as observed in many long-term contracts. A third case, with one-sided specific investments, can generate 'take or pay' contracts and explain why firms sometimes pay for specific investments that appear to benefit employees directly. Copyright 1993 by American Economic Association.
58938621
Wage Bargaining with On-the-Job Search: Theory and Evidence
Most applications of Nash bargaining over wages ignore between-employer competition for labor services and attribute all of the workers' rent to their bargaining power. In this paper, we write and estimate an equilibrium model with strategic wage bargaining and on-the-job search and use it to take another look at the determinants of wages in France. There are three essential determinants of wages in our model: productivity, competition between employers resulting from on-the-job search, and the workers' bargaining power. We find that between-firm competition matters a lot in the determination of wages, because it is quantitatively more important than wage bargaining a la Nash in raising wages above the workers' "reservation wages," defined as out-of-work income. In particular, we detect no significant bargaining power for intermediate- and low-skilled workers, and a modestly positive bargaining power for high-skilled workers.
13349314
An Equilibrium Model of Health Insurance Provision and Wage Determination
We investigate the effect of employer-provided health insurance on job mobility rates and economic welfare using a search, matching, and bargaining framework. In our model, health insurance coverage decisions are made in a cooperative manner that recognizes the productivity effects of health insurance as well as its nonpecuniary value to the employee. The resulting equilibrium is one in which not all employment matches are covered by health insurance, wages at jobs providing health insurance are larger (in a stochastic sense) than those at jobs without health insurance, and workers at jobs with health insurance are less likely to leave those jobs, even after conditioning on the wage rate. We estimate the model using the 1996 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation, and find that the employer-provided health insurance system does not lead to any serious inefficiencies in mobility decisions. Copyright The Econometric Society 2005.
16783978
Insurance within the Firm
We evaluate the allocation of risk between firms and their workers using matched employer‐employee panel data. Unlike previous contributions, this paper focuses on idiosyncratic shocks to the firm, which are the correct empirical counterpart of the theoretical notion of diversifiable risk. We allow for both temporary and permanent shocks to output and find that firms absorb temporary fluctuations fully but insure workers against permanent shocks only partially. Risk‐sharing considerations can account for about 15 percent of overall earnings variability, the remainder originating from idiosyncratic shocks to individual workers. Our welfare calculations indicate that firms are an important vehicle of insurance provision.
154295757
A Theory of Wage Dynamics
A dynamic, equilibrium model of long term (implicit) labour contracts under incomplete but symmetric information is developed. Workers are assumed to be risk averse and of unknown ability or productivity. Risk neutral firms learn, as do workers, about each worker's productivity by observing the worker's output over time. It is shown that equilibrium contracts provide for wages which never decline with age and increase only when the worker's market value increases above his current wage. In addition to characterizing the equilibrium wage contract, we also derive some of its implications for the behaviour of aggregate wages across various groups of workers. These implications explain some findings in the recent empirical literature on age-earnings profiles. In particular our model can explain why earnings may be positively related to experience even after controlling for productivity, as some empirical studies have indicated.
153283197
Designing inclusion : tools to raise low-end pay and employment in private enterprise
List of figures List of tables List of contributors Introduction Edmund S. Phelps 1. Low-wage employment subsidies in a labour-turnover model of the 'natural rate' Hian Teck Hoon and Edmund S. Phelps 2. Taxes, subsidies and equilibrium labour market outcomes Dale Mortensen and Christopher Pissarides 3. Learning-by-doing versus on-the-job training: using variation induced by the EITC to distinguish between models of skill formation James J. Heckman, Lance Lochner and Ricardo Cossa 4. Unemployment vouchers versus low-wage subsidies J. Michael Orszag and Dennis J. Snower Index.
154352613
The Distribution of Earnings in an Equilibrium Search Model with State-Dependent Offers and Counteroffers
We construct an equilibrium job search model with on-the-job search in which firms implement optimal-wage strategies under full information in the sense that they leave no rent to their employees and counter the offers received by their employees from competing firms. Productivity dispersion across firms results in wage mobility both within and across firms. Workers may accept wage cuts to move to firms offering higher future wage prospects. Equilibrium productivity dispersion across ex ante homogeneous firms can be endogenously generated. Productivity dispersion then generates a nontrivial wage distribution which is generically thin-tailed, as typically observed in the data.
45385588
Microeconometric Search-Matching Models and Matched Employer-Employee Data
The recent advent of matched employer-employee data as part of the labor market scholar’s 
toolbox has allowed a great deal of progress in our understanding of individual labor earnings. 
A growing number of empirical analyzes of available matched employer-employee 
data sets now combine with the already voluminous literature on empirical wage equations 
based on individual or household survey data to draw an ever richer picture of wage 
dispersion, individual wage dynamics, and the productivity-wage relationship. 
In this chapter we tour the empirical wage equations literature along these three lines 
and make a case that viewing it through the lens of structural job search models can 
help clarify and unify some of its recurring findings. Among other things, we emphasize 
and quantify the role of matching frictions in explaining the share of “residual” wage 
dispersion that is left unexplained by the reduced-form approach. Secondly, we quantitatively 
assess the importance of labor market competition between employers relative 
to non-competitive wage formation mechanisms (namely, wage bargaining) as a theoretical 
underpinning of the wage-productivity relationship. Thirdly, we show how search 
frictions combined with a theoretically founded wage formation rule based on renegotiation 
by mutual consent can account for the widely documented dynamic persistence of 
individual wages. We conclude with a list of questions that are open to further research.
5096304
On-the-Job Search and Strategic Bargaining
This paper studies wage bargaining in a simple economy in which both employed and unemployed workers search for better jobs. The axiomatic Nash bargaining solution and standard strategic bargaining solutions are inapplicable because the set of feasible payoffs is non-convex. I instead develop a strategic model of wage bargaining between a single worker and firm that is applicable to such an environment. I show that if workers and firms are homogeneous, there are market equilibria with a continuous wage distribution in which identical firms bargain to different wages, each of which is a subgame perfect equilibrium of the bargaining game. If firms are heterogeneous, I characterize market equilibria in which more productive firms pay higher wages. I compare the quantitative predictions of this model with Burdett and Mortensen’s (1998) wage posting model and argue that the bargaining model is theoretically more appealing along important dimensions. ∗I am grateful for insightful comments from an anonymous referee and the seminar audience at the Labour Market and Matched Employer-Employee Data conference in Sønderborg, Denmark, especially John Kennan, Dale Mortensen, Eric Smith, and Randall Wright. I also thank the National Science Foundation and the Sloan Foundation for financial support.
154477200
Non-Cooperative Bargaining Theory: An Introduction
The paper provides an informal introduction to some of the main themes of the recent literature on "non-cooperative" or "sequential" bargaining models. It focuses in particular on the relationship between the new approach and the traditional axiomatic approach exemplified by "Nash bargaining theory" It illustrates the new insights offered by the non-cooperative approach, by reference to a detailed analysis of the manner in which the presence of an outside option available to one of the parties will affect the negotiated outcome. Finally, the difficulties which arise in extending this analysis to two-person bargaining with incomplete information, and to n-person bargaining, are discussed. This is a revised version of the fourth Review of Economic Studies Lecture presented in April 1985 at the joint meeting of the Association of University Teachers of Economics and the Royal Economic Society held in Oxford. The choice of lecturer is made by a panel whose members are currently Professors Hahn, Mirrlees and Nobay, and the paper is refereed in the usual way.
154236167
Self-Enforcing Wage Contracts
We examine long-term wage contracts between a risk-neutral firm and a risk-averse worker when both can costlessly renege and buy or sell labour at a random spot market wage. A self-enforcing contract is one in which neither party ever has an incentive to renege. In the optimum self-enforcing contract, wages are sticky: they are less variable than spot market wages and positively serially correlated. They are updated by a simple rule: around each spot wage is a time invariant interval, and the contract wage changes each period by the smallest amount necessary to bring it into the current interval.