A 1930 novel by Persephone Books' most popular writer about a girl who sets up a dress shop.

We study a longitudinal sample of over one million French workers and over 500,000 employing firms. Real total annual compensation per worker is decomposed into components related to observable characteristics, worker heterogeneity, firm heterogeneity and residual variation. Except for the residual, all components may be correlated in an arbitrary fashion. At the level of the individual, we find that person-effects, especially those not related to observables like education, are the most important source of wage variation in France. Firm-effects, while important, are not as important as person-effects. At the level of firms, we find that enterprises that hire high-wage workers are more productive but not more profitable. They are also more capital and high-skilled employee intensive. Enterprises that pay higher wages, controlling for person-effects, are more productive and more profitable. They are also more capital intensive but are not more high-skilled labor intensive. We also find that person-effects explain 92% of inter-industry wage differentials.

The distribution of income, the rate of pay raises, and the mobility of employees is crucial to understanding labor economics. Although research abounds on the distribution of wages across individuals in the economy, wage differentials within firms remain a mystery to economists. The first effort to examine linked employer-employee data across countries, The Structure of Wages:An International Comparison analyzes labor trends and their institutional background in the United States and eight European countries. A distinguished team of contributors reveal how a rising wage variance rewards star employees at a higher rate than ever before, how talent becomes concentrated in a few firms over time, and how outside market conditions affect wages in the twenty-first century. From a comparative perspective that examines wage and income differences within and between countries such as Denmark, Italy, and the Netherlands, this volume will be required reading for economists and those working in industrial organization.