Ownership and Wages: Estimating Public-Privateand Foreign-Domestic Differentials Using LEEDfrom Hungary, 1986–2003

Studies of public-private and foreign-domestic wage differentials face difficultiesdistinguishing ownership effects from correlated characteristics of workers and firms. Thispaper estimates these ownership differentials using linked employer-employee data (LEED)from Hungary containing 1.35mln worker-year observations for 21,238 firms from 1986 to2003. We find that ownership type is highly correlated with characteristics of both workers(education, experience, gender, and occupation) and firms (size, industry, and productivity),suggesting ownership type is systematically selected along these dimensions...