Most of the rise in overall earnings inequality is accounted for by rising between-industry dispersion from about ten percent of 4-digit NAICS industries. These thirty industries are in the tails of the earnings distribution, and are clustered especially in high-paying high-tech and low-paying...

A simple occupational choice model is used to predict that entrepreneurs who found new firms are more likely to work for small than for large firms prior to start-up. The mechanism underlying the result is heterogeneous risk aversion. The model also predicts a positive association between new...

The paper reexamines the employer size-wage puzzle using NLSY79 data. The empirical results show that even for those who never receive any training from their employers, size-wage premium still exists and is quantitatively important. Wage increases associated with receiving on-the-job training...

Random effects estimates using panel data for 42 colleges and universities over 16 years reveal that the economics faculty size of universities offering a Ph.D. in economics is determined primarily by the long-run average number of Ph.D. degrees awarded annually; the number of full-time faculty...

We provide new evidence that large firms or establishments are more sensitive than small ones to business cycle conditions. Larger employers shed proportionally more jobs in recessions and create more of their new jobs late in expansions, both in gross and net terms. The differential growth rate...

This paper develops a two-period labor market model with imperfect information and on-the-job training, and uses data from National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Cohorts (NLSY79) to test its predictions. We find that training does not explain the positive relationship between employer size...

In contrast to the very large literature on skill-biased technical change among workers, there is hardly any work on the importance of skills for the entrepreneurs who employ those workers, and in particular on their evolution over time. This paper proposes a simple theory of skill-biased change...

We develop a span-of-control model where managerial skills are endogenous and the outcome of investments over the life cycle of managers. We calibrate this model to U.S plant-size data to quantify the effects of distortions that are correlated with the size of production units. These distortions...

Based on data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth covering years 2000 through 2008, it is evident that both male and female workers in medium/larger establishments receive not only higher wages but also have a higher probability of participating in benefit programs than those in...

This study shows that the wage premium paid by large firms fell over the past 20 years and that the decline in the size premium has been most pronounced among the least educated work force. Empirical evidence supports several explanations for the decline in the size premium. First, there has...