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Wage Adjustment in Efficient Long-Term Employment Relationships

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Abstract

We present a model in which efficient long-term employment relationships are sustained by wage adjustments prompted by shocks to idiosyncratic productivity and the arrival of outside job offers. In accordance with casual and formal evidence, these wage adjustments occur only sporadically, due to the presence of renegotiation costs. The model is amenable to analytical solution and yields new insights into a number of labor market phenomena, including: (1) key features of the empirical distributions of changes in pay among job stayers; (2) a property of near-“memorylessness” in wage dynamics that implies that initial hiring wages have only limited influence on later wages and allocation decisions; and (3) a crucial role for nonbase pay—specifically, recruitment and retention bonuses—in sustaining efficient employment relationships.

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  • Michael Elsby & Axel Gottfries & Pawel Krolikowski & Gary Solon, 2023. "Wage Adjustment in Efficient Long-Term Employment Relationships," Working Papers 23-23, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedcwq:97089
    DOI: 10.26509/frbc-wp-202323
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    sticky wages; business cycles;

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • E3 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles
    • J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs
    • J6 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers

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