Compensating Wage Differentials and Voluntary Job Changes: Evidence from West Germany

Abstract

Does the labor market place wage premia on jobs that involve physical strain, job insecurity or bad regulation of hours? This paper derives bounds on the monetary returns to these job disamenities in the West German labor market. We show that in a market with dispersion in both job characteristics and wages, the average wage change of workers who switch jobs voluntarily and opt for consuming more (less) disamenities, provides an upper (lower) bound on the market return to the disamenity. Using longitudinal information from workers in the German Socio Economic Panel, we estimate an upper bound of 5% and a lower bound of 3.5% for the market return to work strain in a job.