TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Berkhout, Peter
AU  - Hartog, Joop
        TI  - Starting Wages Respond to Employer’s Risk
        PY  - 2007/Sep/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 3026
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp3026
        AB  - Firms hiring fresh graduates face uncertainty on the future productivity of workers. Intuitively, one expects starting wages to reflect this. Formal analysis supports the intuition. We use the dispersion of exam grades within a field of education as an indicator of the heterogeneity that employers face. We find solid evidence that starting wages are lower if the variance of exam grades is higher and that starting wages are lower if the skew is higher: employers shift quality risk to new hires, but pay for the opportunity to catch the really good workers.
        KW  - risk
KW  - ability
KW  - wages
        ER  -