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The Review of Economics and Statistics Vol. 80 No. 2 1998

Job Change Patterns and the Wages of Young Men

Audrey Light1; Kathleen McGarry2

1 California State University Los Angeles · 2 University of California, Los Angeles

Abstract

This study uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to distinguish empirically between mover—stayer, “search good,” and “experience good” models of job mobility. We estimate wage models in which the pattern of overall job mobility affects both the level and tenure slope of the log-wage path. After controlling for the correlation between mobility patterns and time-constant person- and job-specific unobservables, we find that workers who undergo persistent mobility have lower log-wage paths than less mobile workers. This finding is consistent with models in which job mobility is driven by time-varying unobservables, such as “experience good” models, where changes in perceived match quality cause turnover.

DOI
10.1162/003465398557519
Volume
80
Issue
2
Pages
276-286
Language
en
Sources
openalex crossref

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