Firm Pay, Amenities, and Inequality

Sydnee Caldwell, Ingrid Haegele and Jörg Heining

No 35149, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We estimate firm-specific amenity valuations using discrete choice experiments in a survey of German workers linked to administrative records. Workers rank hypothetical offers from real firms they would consider joining; randomized wages identify ex-ante, money-metric valuations. Valuations vary across firms and demographic groups, yet a single index predicts firm size and employee satisfaction. High-wage firms provide no worse amenities: valuations rise with wage premia across firms and are approximately orthogonal when weighted by employment. Accounting for amenities widens between-firm inequality by roughly 20 percent in variance terms. Gender differences in valuations explain part of women’s sorting into lower-wage firms.

JEL-codes: J31 J32 J33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-dcm, nep-exp, nep-hrm, nep-inv and nep-lma
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