An Empirical Test of Reder Competition and Specific Human Capital Against Standard Wage Competition

Ludsteck, Johannes und Haupt, Harry (Juli 2007): An Empirical Test of Reder Competition and Specific Human Capital Against Standard Wage Competition. Münchener Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Beiträge (VWL) 2007-22

Abstract

A firm that faces insufficient supply of labor can either increase the wage offer to attract more applicants, or reduce the hiring standard to enlarge the pool of potential employees, or do both. This simultaneous adjustment of wages and hiring standards has been emphasized in a classical contribution by Reder (1955) and implies that wage reactions to employment changes can be expected to be more pronounced for low wage workers than for high wage workers. We test this hypothesis (together with a related hypothesis on firm-specific human capital) by applying a bootstrap-based quantile regression approach to censored panel data from the German employment register. Our findings suggest that market clearing is achieved by a combination of wage and hiring standards adjustment.

• Dokumententyp: Paper
• Keywords: wage setting, hiring standards, wage structure, efficiency wages, panel quantile regression, censoring
• Fakultät: Volkswirtschaft ; Volkswirtschaft > Munich Discussion Papers in Economics ; Volkswirtschaft > Munich Discussion Papers in Economics > Arbeit ; Volkswirtschaft > Munich Discussion Papers in Economics > Statistische Methoden
• Themengebiete: 300 Sozialwissenschaften > 300 Sozialwissenschaft, Soziologie ; 300 Sozialwissenschaften > 330 Wirtschaft
• JEL Classification: J31, J41, C24
• Sprache: Englisch