Wage Compression within the Firm: Evidence from an Indexation Scheme

A-Tier
Journal: Economic Journal
Year: 2019
Volume: 129
Issue: 624
Pages: 3256-3291

Score contribution per author:

1.341 = (α=2.01 / 3 authors) × 2.0x A-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

We revisit the role of labour market institutions by showing how they affect the sharing of firm-specific rents between employers and employees. We look at an Italian wage indexation mechanism (‘Scala Mobile’) that compressed the distribution of wages, imposing real wage increases at the bottom of the distribution. After developing a simplified version of a search model with intra-firm bargaining and on-the-job search, we document that skilled workers received lower wage adjustments when employed at firms with many unskilled workers and they tended to move towards more skill-intensive firms. Moreover, the system drove the least skill-intensive firms out of the market.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:oup:econjl:v:129:y:2019:i:624:p:3256-3291.
Journal Field
General
Author Count
3
Added to Database
2026-01-25