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Compensating Wage Differentials in
Stable Job Matching Equilibrium
Abstract
This paper studies implicit pricing of non-wage job characteristics in the labour market using a two-sided matching model. It departs from the previous literature by allowing worker heterogeneity in productivity, which gives rise to a double transaction problem in a hedonic model. Deriving sufficient conditions under which assortative matching is the unique stable job-worker matching, we show that observed wage differentials between jobs reflect not only compensating wage differentials, but also worker productivity gaps between the jobs. We find that the job-worker matching pattern determines the extent to which compensating wage differentials are confounded with the worker productivity gap effect.
