with the compensation policies of firms. This literature is considered from the perspective of three major theories: human capital, learning, and incentives. Considerable empirical work has addressed each of these theories with some success. However, our understanding of the effect of...

This paper explores the relationship between the duration of a vacancy and the starting wage of a new job, using linked data on vacancies, the posting establishments and the workers eventually filling the vacancies. The unique combination of large-scale, administrative worker-, establishment-...

Using administrative payroll data from the largest U.S. payroll processing company, we document a series of new facts about nominal wage adjustments in the United States. The data allow us to define a worker's per-period base contract wage separately from other forms of compensation such as...

There has been a remarkable increase in wage inequality in the US, UK and many other countries over the past three decades. A significant part of this appears to be within observable groups (such as age-gender-skill cells). A generally untested implication of many theories rationalizing the...

This paper studies the returns to seniority, the returns to experience, and the effects of seniority and experience at the time of a quit or layoff on changes in the job match specific component of wages. We show that these returns are not identified in widely used regression models that relate...

Bargaining models suggest that firm-specific variables play an important role in wage determination. Yet previous empirical studies of wage determination have largely ignored these variables. Our analysis of a large panel data set of U.S. wage contracts suggests that firm-specific variables...

This paper examines the productivity (and wage) gains from locating in dense, urban environments. We distinguish between three potential explanations of why firms are willing to pay urban workers more: (1) the urban wage premium is spurious and is the result of omitted ability measures, (2) the...

We present a model of the labor market with asymmetric information in which the equilibrium of the' market generates unemployment and job queues so that wages may serve as an effective screening device. This happens because more productive workers -- within any group of individuals with a given...

Using a matched employer-employee data set of manufacturing plants in three sub-Saharan countries, I compare the marginal productivity of different categories of workers with the wages they earn. Under certain conditions, the wage premiums for worker characteristics should equal the productivity...