Matched employer-employee data research has found that workers’ wages are affected by the characteristics of the firms they work in, and that higher skilled workers tend to be employed by higher paying firms. This paper examines the contribution of workers’ job mobility to their wage...

In the Self Sufficiency Program (SSP) welfare demonstration, members of a randomly assigned treatment group could receive a subsidy for full time work. The subsidy was available for three years, but only to people who began working full time within 12 months of random assignment. A simple...

Firms frequently provide general skill training to workers at the firm's cost. Theories proposed that labor market frictions entails wage compression, larger productivity gain than wage growth to skill acquisition, and motivates a firm to offer opportunities for skill acquisition, but few...

Although women make up nearly half the U.S. workforce, most studies of earnings inequality focus on men. This is at least in part because of the complexity of modeling both the decision to work (i.e., the extensive margin) and the level of earnings conditional on work (the intensive margin). In...

We consider the implications of a specific alternative to the classical measurement error model, in which the data are optimal predictions based on some information set. One motivation for this model is that if respondents are aware of their ignorance they may interpret the question what is the...

If nominal wages are downward rigid, moderate levels of inflation may improve labor market efficiency by facilitating real wage cuts. In this paper we attempt to test the hypothesis that downward real wage changes occur more readily in higher-inflation environments. Using individual wage change...

This paper analyses changes in the distribution of equivalised gross household income and income inequality in New Zealand between 1983 and 1998. We analyse the distributional effects of changes in household structure, National Superannuation (old age pension), household socio-demographic...

This paper uses data from Statistics New Zealand's linked employer employee database (LEED) over the six year period April 1999-March 2005 to derive and analyse estimates of two-way worker and firm fixed effects components of job earnings rates. The fixed effects estimates reflect the portable...

If nominal wages are downward rigid, moderate levels of inflation may improve labor market efficiency by facilitating real wage cuts. In this paper we attempt to test the hypothesis that downward real wage changes occur more readily in higher-inflation environments. Using individual wage change...