TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Kölling, Arnd
AU  - Schnabel, Claus
AU  - Wagner, Joachim
        TI  - Establishment Age and Wages: Evidence from German Linked Employer-Employee Data
        PY  - 2002/Dec/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 679
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp679
        AB  - Research in wage differentials has a long tradition. Prominent reasons why people make
more or less money in the labor market include personal characteristics of the employee
(e.g., human capital or gender), job characteristics (working conditions demanding
compensating wage differentials), and characteristics of the employer (e.g., industry or firm
size). An emerging empirical literature suggests that one hitherto overlooked firm
characteristic matters, too: Employers which are in business for a longer period of time tend
to pay higher wages. Using a unique rich set of linked employer-employee data we present
first empirical evidence on this firm age - wage nexus for Germany. We find that older firms
pay on average higher wages for workers with the same broadly defined degree of formal
qualification. This firm age differential vanishes after controlling for further worker
characteristics and other firm characteristics besides age; if anything, younger firms pay
more ceteris paribus. These results are in line with findings from a recent study by Brown and
Medoff using U.S. data.
        KW  - linked employer-employee data
KW  - wage
KW  - establishment age
KW  - Germany
        ER  -