This paper studies the optimal wage structure of a firm with imperfect monitoring of worker effort. We find that when firms can commit to (implicit) long-term contracts, imperfect monitoring leads to optimal wage profiles that reflect worker seniority. We provide a precise measure of seniority...

We provide new estimates of the return to job seniority using data similar to that used by Abraham and Farber (1987), Altonji and Shakotko (1987) and Topel (1991) as well as a new PSID sample. Topel's use of a wage and a tenure that refer to different years, his use of the Current Population...

The simplest competitive labor market model asserts that if tenure is a desirable job characteristic for professors, they should be willing to pay for it by accepting lower salaries. Conversely, if an institution unilaterally reduces the probability that its assistant professors receive tenure,...

The idea that wages rise relative to alternatives as job seniority accumulates is the foundation of the theory of specific human capital, as well as other widely accepted theories of compensation. The fact that persons with longer job tenures typically earn higher wages tends to support these...

The extent to which wages rise with the accumulation of seniority(tenure) in a firm after one controls for total labor market experience is a fundamental question about the structure of earnings. A variety of studies have found a large, positive partial effect of tenure on wages. This paper...

There is substantial evidence from the literature on individual wage determination that length of service to the firm is an important determinant of earnings and thus of labor productivity, holding constant employee at-tributes such as age, sex, and education. Earnings growth associated with...

This paper examines the effect of trade unionism on the exit behavior of workers in the context of Hirschman's exit-voice dichotomy. Unionism is expected to reduce quits and permanent separations and raise job tenure by providing a "voice" alternative to exit when workers are dissatisfied with...

We use administrative data linking workers and firms to study employer-to-employer flows. After discussing how to identify such flows in quarterly data, we investigate their basic empirical patterns. We find that the pace of employer-to-employer flows is high, representing about 4 percent of...