Only a few studies have tried to estimate the trend in the elasticity of children's economic status with respect to parents' economic status, and these studies produce conflicting results. In an attempt to reconcile these findings, we use the Panel Study ...

By 1989 the Michigan Panel Study on Income Dynamics (PSID) had experienced approximately 50 percent sample loss from cumulative attrition from its initial 1968 membership. We study the effect of this attrition on the unconditional distributions of several socioeconomic variables and on the...

Nominal wage stickiness is an important component of recent medium-scale structural macroeconomic models, but to date there has been little microeconomic evidence supporting the as- sumption of sluggish nominal wage adjustment. We present evidence on the frequency of nominal wage adjustment...

This paper presents evidence on the extent of wage mobility both while working for the same firm and when moving to a new firm. We find that mean wage growth between jobs is large in comparison to wage growth while working for the same employer, especially for less educated workers who...

This paper presents a new method to correct for measurement error in wage data and applies this method to address an old question: How much downward wage flexibility is there in the United States? We apply standard methods developed by Bai and Perron to identify structural breaks in time series...

This article reviews the evidence on cross-national comparisons of earnings and income inequality in OECD countries. It begins with a series of stylized facts which are then examined and supported by recent studies in the field. Economic, demographic, institutional and policy-related influences...

Measures of inequality and mobility based on self-reported earnings reflect attributes of both the joint distribution of earnings across time and the joint distribution of measurement error and earnings. While classical measurement error would increase measures of inequality and mobility there...

This paper presents a new method to correct for measurement error in wage data and applies this method to address an old question. How much downward wage flexibility is there in the U.S? We apply standard methods developed by Bai and Perron (1998b) to identify structural breaks in time series...