Firms and the Intergenerational Transmission of Labor Market Advantage

Recent research finds that pay inequality stems both from firm pay-setting and from workers’ individual characteristics. Yet, intergenerational mobility research remains focused on transmission of individual traits, and has failed to test how firms shape the inheritance of inequality. We study this question using three decades of Swedish population register data, and decompose the intergenerational earnings correlation into firm pay premiums and stable worker effects. One quarter of the intergenerational earnings correlation at midlife is explained by sorting between firms with unequal pay. Employer or industry inheritance account for a surprisingly small share of this firm-based earnings transmission. Instead, children from high-income backgrounds benefit from matching with high-paying firms irrespective of the sources of parents’ earnings advantage. Our analysis reveals how an imperfectly competitive labor market provides an opening for skill-based rewards in one generation to become class-based advantages in the next.

Disagreements on the Market

A general equilibrium model of publicly traded firms is provided in the case of a perfect market; it shows how, at the market equilibrium, shareholders agree that profits should be maximized, and about how to compute profits. Hence, they all agree on the objectives of the firms. Next three different contexts of market failure are introduced: incomplete financial markets, production externalities, and monopolistic competition. By use of a common tool (value vectors), it is shown how the market mechanism fails to generate full alignment between shareholders: when facing production externalities or monopolistic competition, shareholders do not necessarily agree that profit should be maximized; when facing incomplete financial markets, shareholders disagree on how to compute profits. In a nutshell: trading on the market generates agreement, but if trading is incomplete or imperfectly competitive then agreement is only partial, and the residual disagreements give rise to problems for collective decision-making.

Australia – Anti-Dumping Measures on A4 Copy Paper: Opening a Door to More Anti-Dumping Investigations

This paper analyzes the Australia – Anti-Dumping Measures on A4 Copy Paper panel report, the second recent WTO dispute to involve a challenge to Indonesia's paper industry. The Indonesian paper industry benefits from reduced-cost inputs because of the Indonesian government's influence and subsidies over the timber and pulp market. The report offers the first interpretation of ‘particular market situation’ under Article 2.2 of the WTO's Anti-Dumping Agreement. At the same time, it raises questions regarding the appropriateness of using anti-dumping measures to address what are fundamentally subsidy issues. While the panel ultimately found that Australia's measure was inconsistent with Article 2.2, the paper shows that the panel's interpretation of ‘particular market situation’ increases the relative attractiveness of using anti-dumping duties instead of countervailing measures. Two key points on the welfare implications of the decision can be made. The first relates to the motivations of the Australian paper industry and the imperfectly competitive market in which Australian Paper operates. The second is the importance of challenging subsidies rather than imposing anti-dumping duties where the subsidies in question have negative environmental effects.

Pass-Through of Own and Rival Cost Shocks: Evidence from the U.S. Fracking Boom

In imperfectly competitive settings, a firm's price depends on its own costs as well as those of its competitors. We demonstrate that this has important implications for the estimation and interpretation of pass-through. Leveraging a large input cost shock resulting from the fracking boom, we isolate price responses to firm-specific, regional and industry-wide input cost shocks in the US oil refining industry. The pass-through of these components vary from near zero to full pass-through, reconciling seemingly disparate results from the literature. We illustrate the policy implications of rival cost pass-through in the context of a tax on refinery carbon emissions.