Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

Working Paper Series, Center for Labor Studies,
Uppsala University, Department of Economics

No 2011:14: Wage adjustment and productivity shocks

Mikael Carlsson (), Julián Messin () and Oskar Nordström Skans ()
Additional contact information
Mikael Carlsson: Research Department, Sveriges Riksbank
Julián Messin: Office of the Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean,
Oskar Nordström Skans: Uppsala Center for Labor Studies, Postal: Department of Economics, Uppsala University, P.O. Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden

Abstract: We study how workers’ wages respond to TFP-driven innovations in firms’labor productivity. Using unique data with highly reliable firm-level output prices and quantities in the manufacturing sector in Sweden, we are able to derive measures of physical (as opposed to revenue) TFP to instrument labor productivity in the wage equations. We find that the reaction of wages to sectoral labor productivity is almost three times larger than the response to pure idiosyncratic (firm-level) shocks, a result which crucially hinges on the use of physical TFP as an instrument. These results are all robust to a number of empirical specifications, including models accounting for selection on both the demand and supply side through worker-firm (match) fixed effects. Further results suggest that technological progress at the firm level has negligible effects on the firm-level composition of employees.

Keywords: Matched employer-employee data; sorting; wage; labor productivity; TFP

JEL-codes: J23; J31; J33

57 pages, May 11, 2011

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