Pensions and Wages: An Hedonic Price Theory Approach.

This paper examines whether a trade-off exists between the level of pension benefits and wages. The 1983 Survey of Consumer Finance is used to match detailed information on pension plans to worker characteristics for a random sample of the population. The pension-wage tradeoff is estimated using both a contractual model of the labor market and the spot market model used in previous studies. The results indicate a large negative tradeoff in the contractual model but only a negligible tradeoff in the spot market model. Results from estimating the underlying structural equations for pensions are also presented. Copyright 1992 by Economics Department of the University of Pennsylvania and the Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association.