Wage Inequality of U.S. Truck Drivers

Using CPS data for the period 1979-2009, the wage dispersion of truck drivers (and subsets of the truck driving sample) is compared to the trends in wage dispersion of males economy-wide. We find that truckers' wages experienced a decrease in inequality post-deregulation, as expected given the literature on regulation's impact on the labor market. We also find that the wage dispersion for truckers is markedly different from males economy-wide, providing evidence that the wage distribution of truck drivers has been dominated by the changing structure of the occupation post-deregulation and largely immune to the factors that increased inequality for the aggregate labor market.wage inequality, wage differentials, trucking

Rational inattention and employer learning

Research on employer learning has provided important insights into the dynamic process that determines individual wages, especially during the early part of a worker's career. However, the recent evidence on the absence of employer learning for college graduates by Arcidiacono et al. (2008) and results that economic conditions at labor market entry have persistent effects on wages (for example Oreopoulos et al. (2008)) cast doubt on the model's validity. This paper extends the employer learning model with the theory of rational inattention introduced by Sims (2006). In the model firms optimally allocate attention (=information processing capacity) to learning about the productivity of different worker groups. I find that firms allocate more attention to learning about the productivities of workers who have a higher impact on profits. Furthermore, firms learn about workers' productivities as quickly as possible. Taken together these results resolve the discrepancy between the data and the employer learning model

The speed of employer learning and job market signaling revisited

This paper discusses the claim made in Altonji and Pierret (1997) and Lange (2005) that a high speed of employer learning indicates a low value of job market signaling. The claim is first discussed intuitively in light of Spence's original model and then evaluated in a simple extension of a model developed in Altonji and Pierret (1997). The analysis provided indicates that, if employer learning is incomplete, a high speed of employer learning is not necessarily indicative of a low value of job market signaling

A post-deregulation analysis of wages in US freight transportation

After a period of regulatory changes in the early 1980s we are faced with new freight transportation labor markets in the U.S. Using data from the 1984-1999 Current Population Survey, we examine trends in the wages of workers within freight transportation, with a focus on wage differentials across industries and occupations. Our aim is to provide stylized facts. We find that real wages in rail, truck, and water transport declined over most of the period and have rebounded since 1996. Within industries we find considerable persistence in wage differentials between and within a majority of occupations. We also find evidence of increased competition in a subset of labor market

Are There Differences in the Health-Socioeconomic Status Relationship over the Life Cycle? Evidence from Germany

Most research on the relationship between health and socioeconomic status (SES) controls for changing age or investigates the relationship for a particular age range. This paper, however, examines changes in the relationship across ages, as well as controls for potential endogeneity in the health-SES relationship. Using data from German Socio Economic Panel, we find that the health-SES relationship does vary across the life cycle and that endogeneity is an important influence on the relationship. We also find tentative evidence that universal access to health care reduces the impact of income on self-reported health satisfaction

An Examination of Sheepskin Effects Over Time

Previous empirical specifications are not flexible enough to capture the true pattern of sheepskin effects over time. If the quality of the match between the worker and the job contributes to earnings and if higher ability workers more easily reveal their true productivity, sheepskin effects will follow a concave pattern over time. Using the NLSY and measures of actual experience, a variety of specifications (including median regressions) confirm this pattern

More Detail on the Pattern of Returns to Educational Signals

1 I would like to thank Keith A. Bender, Scott Drewianka, and especially John S. Heywood for comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank two anonymous referees for their insightful comments. Any remaining mistakes are my responsibility

Job Matching and the Returns to Educational Signals

This paper develops a multi-period model, in which workers are matched with jobs according to imperfect educational signals and in which their subsequent productivities depend on both their inherent ability and on the quality of the job match. It outlines a sequential process, in which underpaid employees reveal their true productivities and overpaid employees are detected by the firm until every match is perfect. The model produces a time path of the returns to educational signals that is concave, a feature that earlier studies used to dismiss educational signaling. Using a synthetic panel data set from the Current Population Survey the theoretical result is then substantiated empirically. The paper contributes to the literature by establishing the possibility of increasing returns to education over part of a workers life within the signaling framework theoretically and empirically