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Turbulent firms, turbulent wages?

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Author Info
Diego Comin
Erica L. Groshen
Bess Rubin

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Abstract

Has greater turbulence among firms fueled rising wage instability in the United States? Earlier research by Gottschalk and Moffitt shows that rising earnings instability was responsible for one-third to one-half of the rise in wage inequality during the 1980s. These growing transitory fluctuations remain largely unexplained. To help fill this gap, this paper further documents the recent rise in transitory fluctuations in compensation and investigates its linkage to the concurrent rise in volatility of firm performance documented in research by Comin and Mulani and others. ; After examining models that explain the relationship between firm and wage volatility, we investigate this linkage in three complementary panel data sets, each with its own virtues and limitations: the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (detailed information on workers, but no information on employers), COMPUSTAT (detailed firm information, but only average wage and employment levels about workers), and the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland's Community Salary Survey (wages and employment for specific occupations for identified firms). We find support for the hypothesis in all three data sets. We can rule out straightforward compositional churning as an explanation for the link to firm performance in high-frequency (over spans of five years) wage volatility, although not in more persistent fluctuations (between successive five-year averages). We conclude that the rise in firm turbulence explains about 60 percent of the recent rise in high-frequency (five-year) wage volatility.

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Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of New York in its series Staff Reports with number 238.

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Date of creation: 2006
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Handle: RePEc:fip:fednsr:238

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Keywords: Wages ; Corporate profits;

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This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports: References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Levy, Frank & Murnane, Richard J, 1992. "U.S. Earnings Levels and Earnings Inequality: A Review of Recent Trends and Proposed Explanations," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 30(3), pages 1333-81, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Diego Comin & Sunil Mulani, 2005. "A Theory of Growth and Volatility at the Aggregate and Firm Level," NBER Working Papers 11503, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Peter Gottschalk & Robert Moffitt, 1994. "The Growth of Earnings Instability in the U.S. Labor Market," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 25(1994-2), pages 217-272. [Downloadable!]
  4. David H. Autor & Lawrence F. Katz & Melissa S. Kearney, 2005. "Rising Wage Inequality: The Role of Composition and Prices," Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers 2096, Harvard - Institute of Economic Research. [Downloadable!]
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  5. Giovanni L. Violante, 2000. "Technological Acceleration, Skill Transferability and the Rise in Residual Inequality," ILR working papers 063, Institute for Labour Research. [Downloadable!]
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  6. Erica L. Groshen, 1988. "Why do wages vary among employers?," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, issue Q I, pages 19-38. [Downloadable!]
  7. Janet Currie & Sheena McConnell, 1992. "Firm-Specific Determinants of the Real Wage," NBER Working Papers 4023, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  8. Groshen, Erica L, 1991. "Sources of Intra-industry Wage Dispersion: How Much Do Employers Matter?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 106(3), pages 869-84, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Gertler, Mark & Gilchrist, Simon, 1994. "Monetary Policy, Business Cycles, and the Behavior of Small Manufacturing Firms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 109(2), pages 309-40, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  10. Robert A. Moffitt & Peter Gottschalk, 2002. "Trends in the Transitory Variance of Earnings in the United States," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(478), pages C68-C73, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Kambourov, Gueorgui & Manovskii, Iourii, 2004. "Occupational Mobility and Wage Inequality," IZA Discussion Papers 1189, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
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  12. Michael Kremer & Eric Maskin, 1996. "Wage Inequality and Segregation," Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers 1777, Harvard - Institute of Economic Research.
  13. Michael Kremer & Eric Maskin, 1996. "Wage Inequality and Segregation by Skill," NBER Working Papers 5718, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  14. Abowd, John M. & Kramarz, Francis & Margolis, David N. & Troske, Kenneth R., 2001. "The Relative Importance of Employer and Employee Effects on Compensation: A Comparison of France and the United States," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 419-436, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  15. Erica Groshen, 1996. "American employer salary surveys and labor economics research: issues and contributions," Research Paper 9604, Federal Reserve Bank of New York. [Downloadable!]
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  16. Abowd, John M & Lemieux, Thomas, 1993. "The Effects of Product Market Competition on Collective Bargaining Agreements: The Case of Foreign Competition in Canada," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 108(4), pages 983-1014, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  17. Diego Comin & Thomas Philippon, 2005. "The Rise in Firm-Level Volatility: Causes and Consequences," NBER Working Papers 11388, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  18. Juhn, Chinhui & Murphy, Kevin M & Pierce, Brooks, 1993. "Wage Inequality and the Rise in Returns to Skill," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(3), pages 410-42, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  19. Diego Comin & Sunil Mulani, 2004. "Diverging Trends in Macro and Micro Volatility: Facts," NBER Working Papers 10922, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Buch, Claudia M. & Döpke, Jörg & Stahn, Kerstin, 2008. "Great moderation at the firm level? Unconditional versus conditional output volatility," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2008,13, Deutsche Bundesbank, Research Centre. [Downloadable!]
  2. Claudia M. Buch & Jörg Döpke & Kerstin Stahn, 2008. "Great Moderation at the Firm Level? Unconditional vs. Conditional Output Volatility," CESifo Working Paper Series CESifo Working Paper No. , CESifo Group Munich. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  3. Shane T. Jensen & Stephen H. Shore, 2008. "Changes in the Distribution of Income Volatility," Quantitative Finance Papers 0808.1090, arXiv.org. [Downloadable!]
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