scholarly journals Earnings Instability and Tenure

2015 ◽  
Vol 118 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Cappellari ◽  
Marco Leonardi
Keyword(s):  
1994 ◽  
Vol 1994 (2) ◽  
pp. 217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Gottschalk ◽  
Robert Moffitt ◽  
Lawrence F. Katz ◽  
William T. Dickens

2005 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles M. Beach ◽  
Ross Finnie ◽  
David Gray

This paper examines the variability of workers’ earnings in Canada over the period 1982‑1997. Using a large panel of tax file data, we decompose total variation in earnings across workers and time into a long-run inequality component between workers and an average earnings instability component over time for workers. We find an increase in earnings variability between 1982‑89 and 1990‑97 that is largely confined to men and largely driven by widening long-run earnings inequality. Second, the pattern of unemployment rate and GDP growth rate effects on these variance components is not consistent with conventional explanations and is suggestive of an alternative paradigm of how economic growth over this period widens long-run earnings inequality. Third, when unemployment rate and GDP growth rate effects are considered jointly, macroeconomic improvement is found to reduce the overall variability of earnings as the reduction in earnings instability outweighs the widening of long-run earnings inequality.


Author(s):  
Yuri Ostrovsky

Abstract I consider two flexible models of earnings dynamics suggested in the recent literature and alternative approaches to the treatment of left-censored observations to examine trends in the permanent and transitory variances of earnings of Canadian male workers from 1985 to 2005. I find that both permanent and transitory variances were higher in the 2000s than in the late 1980s or 1990s. In contrast to the late 1980s and the recession period of the early 1990s, both components of variance grew at a similar pace during the post-recession period, and the share of each component in the total variance remained fairly stable. The results are robust to the choice of a model. The study is based on a large sample from a uniquely rich longitudinal administrative dataset.


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