IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/1747.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Covariance Structure of Earnings and Income, Compensatory Behavior and On-the-Job Investments

Author

Listed:
  • J. R. Kearl

Abstract

Observationally alike individuals who make different choices about on-the-job investments should have earnings profiles that differ in systematic ways. In particular, investments in non-specific human capital should result in lower initial earnings but higher earnings growth rates. Human capital models of this sort admit testing, then, by examining the covariance between the level of earnings and the growth rate of earnings. This paper reports estimates of this covariance using the sample covariance among income observations across time for the same individuals. The sample covariances are drawn from the Utah Panel Data, a panel of some 16,000 households with income and wealth observations at various intervals over the period from 1850 to 1900. The parameter of interest is negative. This estimate is robust to various specifications of the model. I also reexamine earlier work by Lillard and Weiss and Hause, who use data on earnings, and conclude that there is strong support for the on-the-job investment hypothesis using data from thre equite different sources covering different economies and different time periods.

Suggested Citation

  • J. R. Kearl, 1985. "The Covariance Structure of Earnings and Income, Compensatory Behavior and On-the-Job Investments," NBER Working Papers 1747, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1747
    Note: DAE LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w1747.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mincer, Jacob, 1970. "The Distribution of Labor Incomes: A Survey with Special Reference to the Human Capital Approach," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 8(1), pages 1-26, March.
    2. Lillard, Lee A, 1977. "Inequality: Earnings vs. Human Wealth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(2), pages 42-53, March.
    3. J. R. Kearl & Clayne L. Pope, 1984. "Unobservable Family and Individual Contributions to the Distributions ofIncome and Wealth," NBER Working Papers 1425, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. George J. Borjas & Jacob Mincer, 1976. "The Distribution of Earnings Profiles in Longitudinal Data," NBER Working Papers 0143, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Hause, John C, 1980. "The Fine Structure of Earnings and the On-the-Job Training Hypothesis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 1013-1029, May.
    6. Yoram Ben-Porath, 1967. "The Production of Human Capital and the Life Cycle of Earnings," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 75(4), pages 352-352.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. repec:eee:labchp:v:1:y:1986:i:c:p:525-602 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Tony Smith & M. Fatih Guvenen, 2007. "Inferring Labor Income Risk from Economic Choices: An Indirect Inference Approach," 2007 Meeting Papers 1024, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    3. Gilles Le Garrec & Stéphane Lhuissier, 2011. "Life expectancy, heavy work and the return to education: lessons for the social security reform," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-01069511, HAL.
    4. Mengistae, Taye, 1999. "The relative effects of skill formation and job matching on wage growth in Ethiopia," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2104, The World Bank.
    5. Parent, Daniel, 1996. "Survol des contributions théoriques et empiriques liées au capital humain," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 72(3), pages 315-356, septembre.
    6. Lisa B. Kahn & Fabian Lange, 2014. "Employer Learning, Productivity, and the Earnings Distribution: Evidence from Performance Measures," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 81(4), pages 1575-1613.
    7. Fatih Guvenen, 2009. "An Empirical Investigation of Labor Income Processes," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 12(1), pages 58-79, January.
    8. Meghir, Costas & Pistaferri, Luigi, 2011. "Earnings, Consumption and Life Cycle Choices," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 9, pages 773-854, Elsevier.
    9. Robert Gibbons & Michael Waldman, 1998. "A Theory of Wage and Promotion Dynamics in Internal Labor Markets," NBER Working Papers 6454, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Gilles Le Garrec, 2012. "Social security and growth in an aging economy : the case of acturial fairness," Working Papers hal-01070354, HAL.
    11. Heckman, James J. & Lochner, Lance J. & Todd, Petra E., 2006. "Earnings Functions, Rates of Return and Treatment Effects: The Mincer Equation and Beyond," Handbook of the Economics of Education, in: Erik Hanushek & F. Welch (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Education, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 7, pages 307-458, Elsevier.
    12. Huggett, Mark & Ventura, Gustavo & Yaron, Amir, 2006. "Human capital and earnings distribution dynamics," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 265-290, March.
    13. Yang, Guanyi, 2018. "Endogenous Skills and Labor Income Inequality," MPRA Paper 89638, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Joshua Graff Zivin & Lisa B. Kahn & Matthew Neidell, 2021. "Incentivizing Learning-by-Doing: The Role of Compensation Schemes," Research in Labor Economics, in: Workplace Productivity and Management Practices, volume 49, pages 139-178, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    15. Barry R. Chiswick, 2006. "Jacob Mincer, Experience and the Distribution of Earnings," Springer Books, in: Shoshana Grossbard (ed.), Jacob Mincer A Pioneer of Modern Labor Economics, chapter 10, pages 109-126, Springer.
    16. Filipe Almeida-Santos & Yekaterina Chzhen & Karen Mumford, 2010. "Employee training and wage dispersion: white- and blue-collar workers in Britain," Research in Labor Economics, in: Jobs, Training, and Worker Well-being, pages 35-60, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    17. Fatih Guvenen, 2007. "Learning Your Earning: Are Labor Income Shocks Really Very Persistent?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 687-712, June.
    18. Paul Bingley & Lorenzo Cappellari, 2019. "Correlation of Brothers' Earnings and Intergenerational Transmission," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(2), pages 370-383, May.
    19. Mark Huggett and Greg Kaplan, 2012. "The Money Value of a Man," Working Papers gueconwpa~12-12-02, Georgetown University, Department of Economics.
    20. Palme, Marten, 1995. "Earnings mobility and distribution: Comparing statistical models on Swedish data," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 213-247, September.
    21. George J. Borjas, 2000. "The Economic Progress of Immigrants," NBER Chapters, in: Issues in the Economics of Immigration, pages 15-50, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    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:nbr:nberwo:1747. 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: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.