J3 - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs

• Capital Structure, Pay Structure and Job Termination

  Staff Working Paper 2016-12 Jason Allen, James R. Thompson

  We develop a model to analyze the link between financial leverage, worker pay structure and the risk of job termination. Contrary to the conventional view, we show that even in the absence of any agency problem among workers, variable pay can be optimal despite workers being risk averse and firms risk neutral.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial institutions, Labour markets JEL Code(s): G, G2, G24, J, J3, J33

• Reconciling the Differences in Aggregate U.S. Wage Series

  Staff Working Paper 2016-1 Julien Champagne, André Kurmann, Jay Stewart

  Average hourly real wage series from the Labor Productivity and Costs (LPC) program and the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program have evolved very differently over the past decades.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Labour markets JEL Code(s): E, E0, E01, E2, E24, E3, E30, J, J3, J30

• The Carrot and the Stick: The Business Cycle Implications of Incentive Pay in the Labor Search Model

  Staff Working Paper 2015-35 Julien Champagne

  This paper considers a real business cycle model with labor search frictions where two types of incentive pay are explicitly introduced following the insights from the micro literature on performance pay (e.g. Lazear, 1986).

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Labour markets JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24, J, J3, J33, J4, J41

• Asking About Wages: Results from the Bank of Canada’s Wage Setting Survey of Canadian Companies

  Staff Discussion Paper 2013-1 David Amirault, Paul Fenton, Thérèse Laflèche

  The Bank of Canada conducted a Wage Setting Survey with a sample of 200 private sector firms from mid-October 2007 to May 2008. Results indicate that wage adjustments for the Canadian non-union private workforce are overwhelmingly time dependent, with a fixed duration of one year, and are clustered in the first four months of the year, suggesting that wage stickiness may not be constant over the year.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Labour markets, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24, J, J3, J33, M, M5, M52

• Fixed-Term and Permanent Employment Contracts: Theory and Evidence

  Staff Working Paper 2011-21 Shutao Cao, Enchuan Shao, Pedro Silos

  This paper constructs a theory of the coexistence of fixed-term and permanent employment contracts in an environment with ex-ante identical workers and employers. Workers under fixed-term contracts can be dismissed at no cost while permanent employees enjoy labor protection.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Labour markets, Potential output, Productivity JEL Code(s): H, H2, H29, J, J2, J23, J3, J38

• Stability versus Flexibility: The Role of Temporary Employment in Labour Adjustment

  Staff Working Paper 2010-27 Shutao Cao, Danny Leung

  In Canada, temporary workers account for 14 per cent of jobs in the non-farm business sector, are present in a range of industries, and account for 40 per cent of the total job reallocation. Yet most models of job reallocation abstract from temporary workers.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Labour markets, Productivity JEL Code(s): D, D2, D24, J, J3, J32

• What Drives Exchange Rates? New Evidence from a Panel of U.S. Dollar Bilateral Exchange Rates

  Staff Working Paper 2010-5 Jean-Philippe Cayen, Donald Coletti, René Lalonde, Philipp Maier

  We use a novel approach to identify economic developments that drive exchange rates in the long run. Using a panel of six quarterly U.S. bilateral real exchange rates – Australia, Canada, the euro, Japan, New Zealand and the United Kingdom – over the 1980-2007 period, a dynamic factor model points to two common factors.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Exchange rates JEL Code(s): J, J3, J31

• What Accounts for the U.S.-Canada Education-Premium Difference?

  Staff Working Paper 2009-4 Oleksiy Kryvtsov, Alexander Ueberfeldt

  This paper analyzes the differences in wage ratios of university graduates to less than university graduates, the education premium, in Canada and the United States from 1980 to 2000. Both countries experienced a similar increase in the fraction of university graduates and a similar increase in skill biased technological change based on capital-embodied technological progress, but only the United States had a large increase in the education premium.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Labour markets, Productivity JEL Code(s): E, E2, E24, E25, J, J2, J24, J3, J31

• Human Capital Risk and the Firmsize Wage Premium

  Staff Working Paper 2008-33 Danny Leung, Alexander Ueberfeldt

  Why do employed persons in large firms earn more than employed persons in small firms, even after controlling for observable characteristics? Complementary to previous results, this paper proposes a mechanism that gives an answer to this question.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Labour markets, Productivity JEL Code(s): J, J2, J24, J3, J31

• The Effect of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on CEO Pay for Luck

  Staff Working Paper 2008-20 Teodora Paligorova

  According to the rent-extraction hypothesis, weak corporate governance allows entrenched CEOs to capture the pay-setting process and benefit from events outside of their control – get paid for luck.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Labour markets JEL Code(s): G, G3, G38, J, J3, J33, M, M5, M52