The Sources of Wage Variation: A Three-Way High-Dimensional Fixed Effects Regression Model

Sónia Torres, Pedro Portugal (), John Addison and Paulo Guimaraes

No 7276, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper estimates a wage equation with three high-dimensional fixed effects, using a longitudinal matched employer-employee dataset covering virtually all Portuguese wage earners over a little more than two decades. The variation in log real hourly wages is decomposed into different components related to worker, firm, and job title characteristics (both observed and unobserved) and a residual component. It is found that worker permanent heterogeneity is the most important source of wage variation (36.0 percent) and that the unobserved component plays a more important role (21.0 percent) than the observed component (15.0 percent) in explaining wage differentials. Firm permanent effects are less important overall (28.7 percent) and are due in almost equal parts to the unobserved component and the observed component. Job title effects emerge as the least important dimension but they still explain close to 10 percent of wage variation. We found definitive evidence of positive assortative matching.

Keywords: high dimensional fixed effects; wage decomposition; assortative matching (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J2 J41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2013-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab, nep-lma and nep-ltv
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (42)

Published - revised version published as 'The Sources of Wage Variation and the Direction of Assortative Matching: A Three-Way High Dimensional Fixed-Effects Regression Model" in: Labour Economics, 2018, 54, 47-60.

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Working Paper: The sources of wage variation: a three-way high-dimensional fixed effects regression model (2013)
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