Models in which employers learn about the productivity of young workers, such as Altonji and Pierret (2001), have two principal implications: First, the distribution of wages becomes more dispersed as a cohort of workers gains experience; second, the coefficient on a variable that employers...

This study provides the first absolute income mobility estimates for postwar Germany. Using various micro data sources, we uncover a steep decline in absolute mobility rates from 81 percent to 59 percent for children's birth cohorts 1962 through 1988. This trend is robust across different ages,...

Previous research on changes in intergenerational mobility suggests that mobility is decreasing over time. One explanation for this pattern is increased cross-sectional income inequality. In contrast to most other OECD countries, income inequality in Norway has been remarkably stable through...

The analysis, based on register data for Norwegian cohorts born 1950, 1955, and 1960, shows that the intergenerational earnings mobility is high. Using quantile regression, mobility is found to be lower at the lower end of the earnings distribution than at the upper end. The findings also...