Econometrica

Journal Of The Econometric Society

An International Society for the Advancement of Economic
Theory in its Relation to Statistics and Mathematics

Edited by: Guido W. Imbens • Print ISSN: 0012-9682 • Online ISSN: 1468-0262

Econometrica: Mar, 2014, Volume 82, Issue 2

Returns to Tenure or Seniority?

https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA8688
p. 705-730

I. Sebastian Buhai, Miguel A. Portela, Coen N. Teulings, Aico van Vuuren

This study documents two empirical facts using matched employer–employee data for Denmark and Portugal. First, workers who are hired last, are the first to leave the firm. Second, workers' wages rise with seniority, where seniority is defined as a worker's tenure to the tenure of his colleagues. Controlling for tenure, the probability of a worker leaving the firm decreases with seniority. The increase in expected seniority with tenure explains a large part of the negative duration dependence of the separation hazard. Conditional on ten years of tenure, the wage differential between the 10th and the 90th percentiles of the seniority distribution is 1.1–1.4 percentage points in Denmark and 2.3–3.4 in Portugal.


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Supplemental Material

Supplement to "Returns to Tenure or Seniority?"

This appendix contains additional tables (in Section A) and additional identification proofs (in Section B), mentioned but not included in the paper.

Supplement to "Returns to Tenure or Seniority?"

This zip file contains the replication files for the manuscript.