IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/aah/aarhec/2012-17.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Wage Sorting Trends

Author

Listed:
  • Jesper Bagger

    (Royal Holloway College, UK)

  • Rune Vejlin

    (Department of Economics and Business, Aarhus University, Denmark)

  • Kenneth L. Sørensen

    (Department of Economics and Business, Aarhus University, Denmark)

Abstract

Using a population-wide Danish Matched Employer-Employee panel from 1980-2006, we document a strong trend towards more positive assortative wage sorting. The correlation between worker and firm fixed effects estimated from a log wage regression increases from -0.07 in 1981 to .14 in 2001. The nonstationary wage sorting pattern is not due to compositional changes in the labor market, primarily occurs among high wage workers, and comprises 41 percent of the increase in the standard deviation of log real wages between 1980 and 2006. We show that the wage sorting trend is associated with worker reallocation via voluntary quits.

Suggested Citation

  • Jesper Bagger & Rune Vejlin & Kenneth L. Sørensen, 2012. "Wage Sorting Trends," Economics Working Papers 2012-17, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    • Handle: RePEc:aah:aarhec:2012-17
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.econ.au.dk/repec/afn/wp/12/wp12_17.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jan Eeckhout & Philipp Kircher, 2011. "Identifying Sorting--In Theory," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 78(3), pages 872-906.
    2. Gruetter, Max & Lalive, Rafael, 2009. "The importance of firms in wage determination," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 149-160, April.
    3. Dirk Krueger & Fabrizio Perri & Luigi Pistaferri & Giovanni L. Violante, 2010. "Cross Sectional Facts for Macroeconomists," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 13(1), pages 1-14, January.
    4. John M. Abowd & Francis Kramarz & David N. Margolis, 1999. "High Wage Workers and High Wage Firms," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(2), pages 251-334, March.
    5. Cristian Bartolucci & Francesco Devicienti, 2012. "Better Workers Move to Better Firms: A Simple Test to Identify Sorting," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 259, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    6. John M. Abowd & Robert H. Creecy & Francis Kramarz, 2002. "Computing Person and Firm Effects Using Linked Longitudinal Employer-Employee Data," Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Technical Papers 2002-06, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    7. M. J. Andrews & L. Gill & T. Schank & R. Upward, 2008. "High wage workers and low wage firms: negative assortative matching or limited mobility bias?," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 171(3), pages 673-697, June.
    8. Rasmus Lentz & Jesper Bagger, 2009. "An Empirical Model of Wage Dispersion with Sorting," 2009 Meeting Papers 964, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    9. Rasmus Lentz, 2012. "An Empirical Model of Wage Dispersion with Sorting," 2012 Meeting Papers 1040, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Andrew Shephard & Modibo Sidibe, 2019. "Schooling Investment, Mismatch,and Wage Inequality," PIER Working Paper Archive 19-013, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    2. David Card & Jörg Heining & Patrick Kline, 2013. "Workplace Heterogeneity and the Rise of West German Wage Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(3), pages 967-1015.
    3. Luca Paolo Merlino & Pierpaolo Parrotta & Dario Pozzoli, 2018. "Gender Differences in Sorting," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(4), pages 671-709, October.
    4. Benjamin Lochner & Bastian Schulz, 2024. "Firm Productivity, Wages, and Sorting," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(1), pages 85-119.
    5. Rasmus Lentz & Suphanit Piyapromdee & Jean-Marc Robin, 2018. "On Worker and Firm Heterogeneity in Wages and Employment Mobility: Evidence from Danish Register Data," PIER Discussion Papers 91, Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research.
    6. Chaudhary, Amit, 2021. "Do workers, managers, and stations matter for effective policing? A decomposition of productivity into three dimensions of unobserved heterogeneity," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1377, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    7. Gallen, Yana & Lesner, Rune V. & Vejlin, Rune, 2019. "The labor market gender gap in Denmark: Sorting out the past 30 years," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 58-67.
    8. Berlingieri, Giuseppe & Blanchenay, Patrick & Criscuolo, Chiara, 2024. "The great divergence(s)," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(3).
    9. Skipper, Niels & Vejlin, Rune, 2015. "Determinants of generic vs. brand drug choice: Evidence from population-wide Danish data," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 204-215.
    10. Marino, Marianna & Parrotta, Pierpaolo & Pozzoli, Dario, 2016. "Educational diversity and knowledge transfers via inter-firm labor mobility," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 168-183.
    11. Torres, Sónia & Portugal, Pedro & Addison, John T. & Guimarães, Paulo, 2018. "The sources of wage variation and the direction of assortative matching: Evidence from a three-way high-dimensional fixed effects regression model," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 47-60.
    12. Battisti, Michele, 2017. "High wage workers and high wage peers," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 47-63.
    13. Schulz, Bastian, 2024. "Labor market dynamics with sorting," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    14. Gueyon Kim & Dohyeon Lee, 2020. "Offshoring and Segregation by Skill: Theory and Evidence," Working Papers 2020-073, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    15. Luca Paolo Merlino & Pierpaolo Parrotta & Dario Pozzoli, 2018. "Gender Differences in Sorting," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(4), pages 671-709, October.
    16. Luca Paolo Merlino & Pierpaolo Parrotta & Dario Pozzoli, 2012. "Assortative Matching Gender," Working Papers ECARES ECARES 2012-040, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rasmus Lentz & Jean Marc Robin & Suphanit Piyapromdee, 2018. "On Worker and Firm Heterogeneity in Wages and Employment Mobility: Evidence from Danish Register Data," 2018 Meeting Papers 469, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    2. Andrews, M.J. & Gill, L. & Schank, T. & Upward, R., 2012. "High wage workers match with high wage firms: Clear evidence of the effects of limited mobility bias," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 117(3), pages 824-827.
    3. Torben Sørensen & Rune Vejlin, 2013. "The importance of worker, firm and match effects in the formation of wages," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 435-464, August.
    4. Nilsen, Øivind Anti & Raknerud, Arvid & Skjerpen, Terje, 2011. "Using the Helmert-transformation to reduce dimensionality in a mixed model: Application to a wage equation with worker and firm heterogeneity," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 11/2011, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics, revised 04 Oct 2011.
    5. Jeremy Lise & Costas Meghir & Jean-Marc Robin, 2016. "Matching, Sorting and Wages," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 19, pages 63-87, January.
    6. Pedro Portugal & Hugo Reis & Paulo Guimarães & Ana Rute Cardoso, 2023. "What lies behind returns to schooling: the role of labor market sorting and worker heterogeneity," Working Papers w202322, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.
    7. Rasmus Lentz & Suphanit Piyapromdee & Jean-Marc Robin, 2022. "The Anatomy of Sorting - Evidence from Danish Data," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03869383, HAL.
    8. Mittag, Nikolas, 2016. "A Simple Method to Estimate Large Fixed Effects Models Applied to Wage Determinants and Matching," IZA Discussion Papers 10447, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Davidson, Carl & Heyman, Fredrik & Matusz, Steven & Sjöholm, Fredrik & Zhu, Susan Chun, 2014. "Globalization and imperfect labor market sorting," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 177-194.
    10. Philipp Ehrl, 2019. "On The Use Of Firm Fixed Effects As A Productivity Measure For Analyzing Labor Market Matching," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 71(2), pages 195-208, April.
    11. Leland D. Crane, 2014. "Firm Dynamics and Assortative Matching," Working Papers 14-25, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    12. Nikolas Mittag, 2015. "A Simple Method to Estimate Large Fixed Effects Models Applied to Wage Determinants and Matching," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp532, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    13. Stéphane Bonhomme & Kerstin Holzheu & Thibaut Lamadon & Elena Manresa & Magne Mogstad & Bradley Setzler, 2023. "How Much Should We Trust Estimates of Firm Effects and Worker Sorting?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41(2), pages 291-322.
    14. Torres, Sónia & Portugal, Pedro & Addison, John T. & Guimarães, Paulo, 2018. "The sources of wage variation and the direction of assortative matching: Evidence from a three-way high-dimensional fixed effects regression model," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 47-60.
    15. Kory Kantenga, 2016. "Sorting and Wage Inequality," 2016 Meeting Papers 660, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    16. Antonio Filippin & Jan C. Ours, 2015. "Positive Assortative Matching: Evidence from Sports Data," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(3), pages 401-421, July.
    17. Jae Song & David J Price & Fatih Guvenen & Nicholas Bloom & Till von Wachter, 2019. "Firming Up Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(1), pages 1-50.
    18. Ainara González de San Román & Yolanda F. Rebollo‐Sanz, 2018. "An Estimation Of Worker And Firm Effects With Censored Data," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 70(4), pages 459-482, October.
    19. John M. Abowd & Francis Kramarz & Sébastien Pérez-Duarte & Ian M. Schmutte, 2018. "Sorting Between and Within Industries: A Testable Model of Assortative Matching," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 129, pages 1-32.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Matched Employer-Employee Data; Firmfixed effects; Worker fixed effects; Wage sorting; Wage inequality; Voluntary quits.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J30 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - General
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:aah:aarhec:2012-17. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: http://www.econ.au.dk/afn/ .

    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.