Subjective Earnings and Employment Dynamics

Manuel Arellano, Orazio Attanasio, Margherita Borella, Mariacristina De Nardi and Gonzalo Paz-Pardo

No 35027, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We develop a new approach to estimating earnings, job, and employment dynamics using subjective expectations data from the NY Fed Survey of Consumer Expectations. These data provide beliefs about future earnings offers and acceptance probabilities, offering direct information on counterfactual outcomes and enabling identification under weaker assumptions. Our framework avoids biases from selection and unobserved heterogeneity that affect models using realized outcomes. First-step fixed-effects regressions identify risk, persistence, and transition effects; second-step GMM recovers the covariance structure of unobserved heterogeneities such as ability, mobility, and match quality. We find lower risk and persistence of the individual productivity component than in prior work, but greater heterogeneity in ability and match quality. Simulations show that reduced-form estimates overstate persistence and volatility on individual-level productivity due to job transitions and sorting. After accounting for heterogeneity, volatility declines and becomes flat across the earnings distribution. These results underscore the value of expectations data.

JEL-codes: C23 C8 D15 J01 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-04
Note: LS PE TWP
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w35027.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Subjective Earnings and Employment Dynamics (2026)
Working Paper: Subjective Earnings and Employment Dynamics (2026)
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35027

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w35027
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().