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Rent Sharing Before and After the Wage Bill

Pedro Martins

No 12, Working Papers from Queen Mary, University of London, School of Business and Management, Centre for Globalisation Research

Abstract: Many biases plague the analysis of whether employers share rents with their employees, unlike what is predicted by the competitive labour market model. Using a Portuguese matched employer-employee panel, these biases are addressed here in three complementary ways: 1) Controlling directly for the fact that firms that share more rents will, ceteris paribus, have lower net-of-wages profits. 2) Instrumenting profits via interactions between the exchange rate and the share of exports in firms’ total sales. 3) Considering firm or firm/worker spell fixed effects and highlighting the role of downward wage rigidity. These approaches clarify conflicting findings in the literature and result, in our preferred specifications, in significant evidence of rent sharing (a Lester range of pay dispersion of 56%), also shown to be robust to a number of competitive interpretations.

Keywords: Rent Sharing; Instrumental Variables; Matched Employer-Employee Data; Fixed Effects. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C33 J31 J41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (34)

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http://cgr.sbm.qmul.ac.uk/CGRWP12.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Rent sharing before and after the wage bill (2009) Downloads
Working Paper: Rent Sharing Before and After the Wage Bill (2004) Downloads
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cgs:wpaper:12

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