This article puts the relationship between wage dispersion and firm productivity to an updated test, taking advantage of access to detailed Belgian linked employer-employee panel data. Controlling for simultaneity issues, time-invariant workplace characteristics and dynamics in the adjustment...

This paper examines the impact of wage dispersion on firm performance, measured by value-added per worker, in large Belgian firms. Using matched employer-employee data for 2003, we find the existence of a positive and hump-shaped relationship between (conditional) wage dispersion and firm...

Offshoring is generally believed to be productivity-enhancing and this belief is underpinned by economic theory. This article contributes to the growing literature that tests empirically whether offshoring does indeed help to improve productivity. Estimating the impact of materials and business...

The paper explores the link between different institutional features of minimum wage systems and the minimum wage bite. We notably address the striking absence of studies on sectoral-level minima and exploit unique data covering 17 European countries and information from more than 1100...

The authors use matched employer-employee panel data on Belgian private-sector firms to estimate the relationship between wage/productivity differentials and the firm's labor composition in terms of part-time and sex. Findings suggest that the groups of women and part-timers generate employer...

This paper is one of the first to use employer-employee data on wages and labor productivity to measure discrimination against immigrants. We build on an identification strategy proposed by Bartolucci (2014) and address firm fixed effects and endogeneity issues through a diff GMM-IV estimator....

Different empirical studies suggest that the structure of employment in the U.S. and Great Britain tends to polarise into "good" and "bad" jobs. We provide updated evidence that polarisation also occurred in Germany since the mid-1980s until 2008. Using representative panel data, we show that...

This paper is one of the first to examine how the use of fixed-term employment contracts (FTCs) affects firm competitiveness (i.e. productivity, wages and profits) while controlling for key econometric issues such as time-invariant unobserved workplace characteristics, endogeneity and state...

Measuring the economic impact of coworkers from different countries of origin sparked intense scrutiny in labor economics, albeit with an uncomfortable methodological limitation. Most attempts involved metrics that eliminate most of the economically relevant distances among different countries...

How do firm-level collective agreements affect firm performance in a multi-level bargaining system? Using detailed Belgian linked employer-employee panel data, our findings show that firm agreements increase both wage costs and productivity (with respect to sector-level agreements). Relying on a...