RETURN TO EXPERIENCE AND INITIAL WAGE LEVEL: DO LOW WAGE WORKERS CATCH UP?

Kenneth Sørensen and Rune Vejlin

Journal of Applied Econometrics, 2014, vol. 29, issue 6, 984-1006

Abstract: SUMMARY This paper estimates the relationship between initial wage and return to experience. We use a Mincer‐like wage model to non‐parametrically estimate this relationship allowing for an unobservable individual permanent effect in wages and unobservable individual return to experience. The relationship between return to experience and unobservable individual ability is negative when conditioning on educational attainment, while the relationship between return to experience and educational attainment is positive. We link our findings to three main theories of wage growth, namely search, unobserved productivity and learning, and human capital. We devise several empirical tests in order to separate the theories. We find evidence in favor of the unobserved productivity and learning model and mixed evidence regarding the search model. We find no evidence in support of the human capital model. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/

Related works:
Working Paper: Return to Experience and Initial Wage Level: Do Low Wage Workers Catch Up? (2012)
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:wly:japmet:v:29:y:2014:i:6:p:984-1006

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www3.intersci ... e.jsp?issn=0883-7252

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Applied Econometrics is currently edited by M. Hashem Pesaran

More articles in Journal of Applied Econometrics from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().