Holdup and wage dispersion

Youze Lang and Weichao Zhu

Economic Modelling, 2020, vol. 90, issue C, 135-142

Abstract: This paper provides a search-theoretic model of the labor market, in which large firms hire workers sequentially and wages are bargained with full commitment. The firm's optimal vacancy-posting strategy trades off the fact that a larger size decreases marginal benefits from subsequent jobs, but avoids higher future recruiting costs attributable to the holdup effect. The holdup effect is dominant if the production function is not sufficiently concave, resulting in firm-size wage premium. The equilibrium features wage dispersion both within and between firms. When calibrated to the U.S. data, the extended model accounts for 67%–84% of the observed wage dispersion, among which 13%–27% is attributed to the holdup effect.

Keywords: Search frictions; Holdup; Firm-size wage premium; Wage dispersion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 J23 J64 L25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264999319320395
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:ecmode:v:90:y:2020:i:c:p:135-142

DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2020.04.018

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Modelling is currently edited by S. Hall and P. Pauly

More articles in Economic Modelling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().