 Does firm size really affect earnings?Mans Soderbom, Francis Teal and Anthony Wambugu No 2002-08, CSAE Working Paper Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford Abstract: In this paper we investigate the implications of labour and capital market imperfections for the relationship between firm size and earnings. To establish that such a question is of interest we need to show that the firm size-wage effect cannot be explained by either the observed or unobserved skills of the workforce or the characteristics of the workplace. To do that we require data where controls are possible for observable time-varying firm and worker characteristics, as well as the unobservable characteristics of both the firm and its workers. Our data is a sample of workers matched with firms over time so such controls are possible. Changes in wages are shown to respond to changes both to profits per employee and the size of the firm. It is argued that these empirical results clearly reject the hypothesis that the firm-size relationship can be explained by the skills of the workers. They can be shown to be consistent with some forms of non-competitive theories of bargaining and efficiency wages. Keywords: Skills; efficiency wages; bargaining; firm size; earnings; African manufacturing (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:csa:wpaper:2002-08 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in CSAE Working Paper Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford Contact information at EDIRC. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.