Wage dispersion between and within plants: Sweden 1985-2000

Abstract

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The great divergence(s)

“…A similar important role for between-firm dispersion has been found in other countries: Brazil (Helpman et al, 2017), Germany (Card et al, 2013;Goldschmidt and Schmieder, 2015), Italy (Card et al, 2014), and Sweden (Skans et al, 2009;Håkanson et al, 2015).…”

“…A future step of the MultiProd project will be to access matched employer-employee data for a subset of countries in which the data are available.14 Note that thanks to the availability and accessibility of matched employer-employee several studies have focused on Germany (e.g Card et al, 2013;Goldschmidt and Schmieder, 2015;Baumgarten et al, 2016). and Sweden (e.g Skans et al, 2009;Akerman et al, 2013;Håkanson et al, 2015). 15 A caveat of the within-sector between-firm analysis carried out in the rest of the report is that the occupation structure is not observed in the micro-data.…”

Within‐firm wage inequality and firm‐level exports

“…The majority of the related papers focus on wage dynamics and dispersion across time, across firms and across industries. Skans, Edin, and Holmlund () and Barth, Bryson, Davis, and Freeman () study the role of establishments (plants) in Sweden and the United States, respectively, in driving changes in aggregate wage dispersion over time. Their findings suggest that what matters for inequality is where employees work.…”

Firms and Labor Market Inequality: Evidence and Some Theory

“…In fact, an extensive literature has documented the existence of substantial wage di erences across plants and establishments (Slichter, 1950;Davis and Haltiwanger, 1991;Groshen, 1991;Bernard and Jensen, 1995;Cardoso, 1997;Cardoso, 1999;Skans, Edin, and Holmlund, 2009;Song et al, 2015) that are strongly correlated with basic measures of productivity. Nevertheless, economists have been reluctant to interpret these di erences as wage premiums or rents, since it has been di cult to know how unobserved worker quality di ers across plants.…”