Essays on Careers in U.S. Labor Markets
Author | : Lisa Blau Kahn |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 274 |
Release | : 2008 |
ISBN-10 | : OCLC:261376980 |
ISBN-13 | : |
Rating | : 4/5 (80 Downloads) |
Download or read book Essays on Careers in U.S. Labor Markets written by Lisa Blau Kahn and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis consists of three essays in which I seek to understand how internal firm practices affect long-term outcomes for workers. In each essay, I exploit variation in external labor market conditions to help identify changes inside the firm. In the first chapter, I explore whether employer learning about worker quality is asymmetric. Do incumbent employers learn faster about their workers than does the outside market? I develop a methodology to measure the extent to which employers learn by relating the pay change distribution to various features of ability distributions. I exploit three distinct external labor market factors to generate differences in ability distributions, including the reason why workers left the previous job, economic conditions when entering a job, and occupational differences. I find that asymmetric learning is prevalent in the labor market with effects on wage-change distributions that are significant, both statistically and in terms of economic magnitudes.