EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Wage Policies of a Russian Firm and the Financial Crisis of 1998: Evidence from Personnel Data – 1997 to 2002

Thomas Dohmen, Hartmut Lehmann () and Mark Schaffer ()

No 3350, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We use a rich personnel data set from a Russian firm for the years 1997 to 2002 to analyze how the financial crisis in 1998 and the resulting change in external labor market conditions affect the wages and the welfare of workers inside a firm. We provide evidence that large shocks to external conditions affect the firm’s personnel policies, and show that the burden of the shock is not evenly spread across the workforce. The firm takes advantage of a high-inflationary environment and of a fall in workers’ outside options after the financial crisis and cuts real wages. Earnings are curbed most for those who earned the highest rents, resulting in a strong compression of real wages. The fact that real wages and real compensation levels never recovered to pre-crisis levels even though the firm’s financial situation was better in 2002 than before the crisis and the differential treatment of employee groups within the firm can be taken as evidence that market forces strongly influence the wage policies of our firm.

Keywords: internal labor markets; Russia; personnel data; wage policies of a firm (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J23 J31 P23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 66 pages
Date: 2008-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-tra
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published - revised version published in: Industrial Labor Relations Review, 2014, 67 (2), 504-531.

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp3350.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Wage Policies of a Russian Firm and the Financial Crisis of 1998: Evidence from Personnel Data, 1997 to 2002 (2014) Downloads
Working Paper: Wage policies of a Russian firm and the financial crisis of 1998: Evidence from personnel data 1997 to 2002 (2013) Downloads
Working Paper: Wage policies of a Russian firm and the financial crisis of 1998: Evidence from personnel data - 1997-2002 (2013) Downloads
Working Paper: Wage policies of a Russian firm and the financial crisis of 1998: Evidence from personnel data 1997 to 2002 (2008) Downloads
Working Paper: Wage Policies of a Russian Firm and the Financial Crisis of 1998: Evidence from Personnel Data - 1997 to 2002 (2008) Downloads
Working Paper: Wage Policies of a Russian Firm and the Financial Crisis of 1998: Evidence from Personnel Data - 1997 to 2002 (2008) Downloads
Working Paper: Wage Policies of a Russian Firm and the Financial Crisis of 1998: Evidence from Personnel Data - 1997 to 2002 (2008) Downloads
Working Paper: Wage policies of a Russian firm and the financial crisis of 1998: Evidence from personnel data - 1997 to 2002 (2008) Downloads
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:iza:izadps:dp3350

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().

 
Page updated 2025-02-11
Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3350