Age and Opportunities for Promotion

Using a panel of new firms and their employees, this paper studies the promotion opportunities for older workers within the same firm. Survival analysis suggests that younger employees experience shorter times to promotion than older workers and, therefore, the latter face a smaller likelihood of promotion. Although men are promoted more often than women, empirical results show that women have shorter survival times to promotion than men. Also, previous promotions are stronger determinants of subsequent ones and this finding provides support to the evidence on promotion "fast-tracks".