The Relative Importance of Employer and Employee Effects on Compensation: A Comparison of France and the United States

Using individual data on compensation, matched with establishment and firm data on performance and inputs, we compare the French and American pay systems. The compensation measures are decomposed into components related to measured individual characteristics, establishment-enterprise effects, and a residual. In France, the compensation outcomes are more compressed than in the United States. For France, individual characteristics and establishment effects explain more of the variability in compensation outcomes than in the United States. The observable and unobservable components of compensation are identically correlated in the two countries. The relations among compensation components (individual and establishment) and firm performance outcomes (value-added per worker, sales per worker, and profit per unit of capital) exhibit some important similarities and differences between the countries. Higher paid workers, either because of individual characteristics or establishment effects, are employed in firms that are more productive. Higher pay due to enterprise heterogeneity is associated with higher profitability in France but lower profitability in the United States. J. Japan Int. Econ. December 2001, 15(4), pp. 419-436. Department of Labor Economics, Cornell University, 259 Ives Hall, Ithaca, New York 14853-3901, CREST and NBER; CREST-INSEE, 15, bd Gabriel Péri, 92245 Malakoff Cedex, France, CEPR and IZA; LAMIA-TEAM, Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 106-112, bd de l'Hôpital, 75647 Paris Cedex 13, France, and Crest; and Department of Economics, University of Missouri-Columbia, 118 Professional Bldg., Columbia, Missouri 65211.