Wage Dispersion between and within U.S. Manufacturing Plants, 1963-1986

68 Pages Posted: 13 Sep 2010 Last revised: 4 Sep 2022

See all articles by Stephen J. Davis

Stephen J. Davis

affiliation not provided to SSRN

John Haltiwanger

University of Maryland - Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Date Written: May 1991

Abstract

This paper exploits a rich and largely untapped source of information on the wages and other characteristics of individual manufacturing plants to cast new light on recent changes in the United States wage structure. Our primary data source, the Longitudinal Research Datafile (LRD) , contains observations on more than 300,000 manufacturing plants during Census years (1963, 1967, 1972, 1977, 1982) and 50,000-70,000 plants during intercensus years since 1972. We use the information in the LRD to investigate changes in the plant-wage structure over the past three decades. We also combine plant-level wage observations in the LRD with wage observations on individual workers in the Current Population Survey (CPS) to estimate the between-plant and within-plant components of overall wage dispersion.

Suggested Citation

Davis, Stephen J. and Haltiwanger, John C., Wage Dispersion between and within U.S. Manufacturing Plants, 1963-1986 (May 1991). NBER Working Paper No. w3722, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1674286

Stephen J. Davis

affiliation not provided to SSRN

John C. Haltiwanger

University of Maryland - Department of Economics ( email )

College Park, MD 20742
United States
301-405-3504 (Phone)
301-405-3542 (Fax)

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) ( email )

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) ( email )

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

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