In recent years a large literature has developed that investigates the role of insurance in labor market contracting. Papers in this literature typically assume that workers are completely restricted from borrowing. The authors argue, and to some extent demonstrate, that in many environments...

An extensive theoretical literature investigates the role of promotions as a signal of worker ability. We extend the theory by focusing on how the signaling role of promotion varies with education and then investigate the resulting predictions using a longitudinal data set that contains detailed...

In previous work, we showed that a model that integrates job assignment, human capital acquisition, and learning can explain several empirical findings concerning wage and promotion dynamics inside firms. In this article, we extend that model in two ways. First, we incorporate schooling and...

A firm will typically gather information concerning its own workers that is not available to other potential employers, while other firms will attempt to reduce this information asymmetry by observing the actions of the initial employer. The author argues that this process can be important in...

Using establishment-level data, we shed light on the sources of the changes in the structure of production, wages, and employment that have occurred over recent decades. Our findings are: (1) the between-plant component of wage dispersion is an important and growing part of total wage...

Using a large data set that links individual Current Population Survey (CPS) records to employer-reported administrative data, we document substantial discrepancies in basic measures of employment status that persist even after controlling for known definitional differences between the two data...