Individual Wage Growth: The Role of Industry Experience

This paper focuses on the effect of experience within an industry on wages. I use a correlated random effects simultaneous equation model that allows individual and match heterogeneity to affect wages, job tenure and industry experience. I estimate my model separately for men and women using a large panel of young Italian workers for the years 1986–2004. Results show that wage returns to industry experience are much higher than wage returns to job seniority. The hypotheses of exogeneity of job seniority and industry experience in the wage equation are rejected: high-wage workers and highwage matches last longer.