TY  - JOUR
AU  - Lichtenberg,Frank R.
TI  - Training, Tenure, and Productivity
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 671
PY  - 1981
Y2  - May 1981
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w0671
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w0671.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Frank R. Lichtenberg
Columbia University
504 Uris Hall
3022 Broadway
New York, NY  10027
Tel: 212/854-4408
Fax: (212) 854-9895
E-Mail: frl1@columbia.edu
AB  - There is substantial evidence from the literature on individual wage determination that length of service to the firm is an important determinant of earnings and thus of labor productivity, holding constant employee at-tributes such as age, sex, and education. Earnings growth associated with increased tenure is usually interpreted as a reflection of firm-specific on-the-job training (OJT). In this paper a model of producer technology  consistent with the hypothesis of firm-specific OJT is formulated and estimated. Empirical implementation of the model on data for U.S. manufacturing provides the basis for estimation of the marginal productivity of workers classified by length of service to the firm, i.e., of the tenure-productivity profile. The parameter estimates also enable us to determine the effect of recent changes in the tenure distribution (due to changes in labor turnover behavior) on manufacturing productivity performance.
ER  -