How wages change: micro evidence from the international wage flexibility project

William T. Dickens, Lorenz Goette, Erica Groshen, Steinar Holden, Julian Messina, Mark Schweitzer, Jarkko Turunen and Melanie Ward

No 275, Staff Reports from Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Abstract: How do the complex institutions involved in wage setting affect wage changes? The International Wage Flexibility Project provides new microeconomic evidence on how wages change for continuing workers. We analyze individuals' earnings in thirty-one different data sets from sixteen countries, from which we obtain a total of 360 wage change distributions. We find a remarkable amount of variation in wage changes across workers. Wage changes have a notably non-normal distribution; they are tightly clustered around the median and also have many extreme values. Furthermore, nearly all countries show asymmetry in their wage distributions below the median. Indeed, we find evidence of both downward nominal and real wage rigidities. We also find that the extent of both these rigidities varies substantially across countries. Our results suggest that variations in the extent of union presence in wage bargaining play a role in explaining differing degrees of rigidities among countries.

Keywords: Wages; Income distribution; Collective bargaining; Bank competition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge and nep-fin
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (330)

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Related works:
Journal Article: How Wages Change: Micro Evidence from the International Wage Flexibility Project (2007)
Working Paper: How Wages Change: Micro Evidence from the International Wage Flexibility Project (2007)
Working Paper: How wages change: micro evidence from the International Wage Flexibility Project (2006)
Working Paper: How wages change: micro evidence from the International Wage Flexibility Project (2006)
Working Paper: How Wages Change: Micro Evidence from the International Wage Flexibility Project (2006)
Working Paper: How wages change: micro evidence from the International Wage Flexibility Project (2006)
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