IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/1714.html

Jobs, Workers and Changes in Earnings Dispersion

Author

Listed:
  • Burgess, Simon
  • Lane, Julia
  • Stevens, David

Abstract

The ‘fractal’ nature of the rise in earnings dispersion is one of its key features and remains a puzzle. This paper offers a new perspective on the causes of changes in earnings dispersion, focusing on the role of labour reallocation. Once we drop the assumption that all firms pay a given worker the same, the allocation of workers to firms matters for the dispersion of earnings. This perspective highlights two new factors that can affect the dispersion of earnings: rates of job and worker reallocation, and the nature of the process allocating workers to jobs. We set out a framework capturing this idea and quantify the impact of reallocation on earnings dispersion, using a dataset which comprises almost the universe of workers and the universe of employers in Maryland. We show that these factors have potentially large effects in general on earnings dispersion. In the case of Maryland over the period 1985–94, the changing allocation of workers to jobs played a significant role in explaining movements in the dispersion of earnings.

Suggested Citation

  • Burgess, Simon & Lane, Julia & Stevens, David, 1997. "Jobs, Workers and Changes in Earnings Dispersion," CEPR Discussion Papers 1714, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:1714
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=1714
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Atkinson Anthony B., 2000. "The Changing Distribution of Income: Evidence and Explanations," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 1(1), pages 3-18, February.
    2. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2629-2710 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Ramos, Xavier, 2001. "The dynamics of individual male earnings in Great Britain: 1991-1999," ISER Working Paper Series 2001-15, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    4. Burgess, Simon, 1999. "The reallocation of labour: an international comparison using job tenure," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 20232, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D33 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Factor Income Distribution
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:1714. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.