Wages Equal Productivity: Fact or Fiction?
Johannes Van Biesebroeck
No 10174, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Abstract:
Using a matched employer-employee data set of manufacturing plants in three sub-Saharan countries, I compare the marginal productivity of different categories of workers with the wages they earn. Under certain conditions, the wage premiums for worker characteristics should equal the productivity benefits associated with them. I find that equality holds strongly for the most developed country in the sample (Zimbabwe), but not at all for the least developed country (Tanzania). Differences between wage and productivity premiums are most pronounced for characteristics that are clearly related to human capital, such as schooling, training, experience, and tenure. Localized labor markets, imperfect substitutability of different worker-types, sampling errors, and nonlinear effects are rejected as explanation for the gap between wage and productivity effects.
JEL-codes: J31 J41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-12
Note: LS PR
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)
Published as Van Biesebroeck, Johannes, 2011. "Wages Equal Productivity. Fact or Fiction? Evidence from Sub Saharan Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(8), pages 1333-1346, August.
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10174.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
Journal Article: Wages Equal Productivity. Fact or Fiction? Evidence from Sub Saharan Africa (2011) 
Working Paper: Wages Equal Productivity. Fact or Fiction? (2007) 
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:nbr:nberwo:10174
Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10174
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().