Early Career Experiences and Later Career Outcomes

David Margolis, Véronique Simonnet () and Lars Vilhuber
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Véronique Simonnet: TEAM - Théories et Applications en Microéconomie et Macroéconomie - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: This paper represents an attempt to untangle the theoretically complicated, and empirically uncertain, links between the early career experiences of young people in the labor market and their labor market success or failure later in life. We use a large set of measures of early career experiences and consider the impact of these measures on a variety of different measures of later career success 5 to 20 years after labor market insertion. Institutions seem to condition labor market outcomes, as our results differ significantly from one country to the next, for the same variables in the same econometric specifications. We find that labor market outcomes in (western) Germany are consistent with a dual labor market model for men and unobserved heterogeneity in reservation wages for women. In the case of American workers, either the market learns about unobservable worker characteristics over time, or the implicit contracts established at the start of the career are increasingly renegotiated over time. Unobserved heterogeneity in individuals' networks of labor market contacts is an explanation that seems to be the most consistent with our results for France. These results reflect optimal firm responses to the different institutional environments in each country in the presence of imperfect information concerning young workers ex ante.

Keywords: Early career experiences; career outcomes; United States; France; Germany (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999-09
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Published in European Economic Association Annual Meeting, Sep 1999, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

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Related works:
Working Paper: Early Career Experiences and Later Career Outcomes (1999)
Working Paper: Early Career Experiences and Later Career Outcomes (1999)
Working Paper: Early Career Experiences and Later Career Outcomes (1999)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00367567

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