Estimation of the wage offer distribution using both accepted and rejected offers

Junjie Guo

Labour Economics, 2025, vol. 96, issue C

Abstract: This paper estimates the wage offer distribution using workers who received multiple offers in a short period of time, including both accepted and rejected offers. We show that, after accounting for worker heterogeneity and measurement error, each wage offer is a random draw from the same distribution, and a normal distribution with a standard deviation of 0.137 is consistent with data. The dispersion is smaller than most estimates in the literature, increasing in the unemployment rate for workers without a bachelor’s degree, but not significantly related to a worker’s age or employment status.

Keywords: Job search; Labor market frictions; Order statistics; Wage dispersion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C46 J31 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:labeco:v:96:y:2025:i:c:s0927537125000806

DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102756

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