Estimating the Wage Costs of Inter- and Intra-Sectoral Adjustment

Michelle Haynes, Richard Upward () and Peter William Wright ()

No 2710, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: The proposition that labour market adjustments to intra-industry trade are less costly than adjustments to inter-industry trade is a widely-held belief amongst trade economists. If it is the case that there are significant sector-specific skills, then this ‘smooth adjustment hypothesis’ seems intuitive. However, direct evidence relating to this issue remains largely anecdotal. In this Paper we adopt the methodology of the micro-econometric labour literature to estimate the returns to tenure within firms, industries and occupations in order to predict the costs, in terms of wage losses, of moving jobs between and within sectors. To do this we use a large panel of individual workers for the UK over a long period (1975–1998), which enables us to control for unobserved fixed effects which may jointly determine the propensity to move jobs and the wage level.

Keywords: Industry Specific Skills; Mobility; Smooth Adjustment; Tenure; Wages (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C33 F16 J30 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001-02
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/DP2710.asp (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Estimating the wage costs of inter- and intra- sectoral adjustment (2002)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:2710

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/DP2710.asp

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers
Address: Centre for Economic Policy Research, 53--56 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DG
Series data maintained by ().