The Employer Age-Wage Effect: Evidence from Matched Employer-Employee Data

Fredrik Heyman

No 193, Working Paper Series from Trade Union Institute for Economic Research

Abstract: This paper uses a large matched employer-employee data set for Sweden to study the relationship between firm age and individual wages, systematically addressing a variety of possible explanations for observing a firm-age wage effect. Results show considerable heterogeneity across years, along segments of the firm age distribution and across industries. A positive and significant firm age-wage premium, robust to a number of control variables, is found in 1995. This effect is not found for 1987 and 1991, two periods characterised by different business cycle conditions than 1995. The relationship between firm age and wages is not monotonic; rather it varies along segments of the firm age distribution. It also differs systematically across different sectors of the economy. A positive firm age effect is found only in the manufacturing sector. Finally, taking into account that larger firms are also older firms, results show that inclusion of firm age does not alter the positive effect of firm size on wages.

Keywords: Wages; firm age; firm size; matched employer-employee data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J21 J31 J63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2004-05-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec and nep-ltv
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://swopec.hhs.se/fiefwp/papers/WP193.pdf (application/pdf)

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:hhs:fiefwp:0193

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Trade Union Institute for Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sune Karlsson ().