Many previous studies have found a strong positive effect of job seniority (tenure) on wag es. This paper reexamines the evidence using a simple instrumental va riables scheme to deal with the fact that tenure is likely to be rela ted to unobserved individual and job characteristics that affect...

Pay distributions fan out with experience. The leading explanations for this pattern are that over time, either employers learn about worker productivity but productivity remains fixed or workers' productivities themselves evolve heterogeneously. We propose a dynamic specification that nests...