Workplace Characteristics and Their Effects on Wages: Australian Evidence

Abstract

Using data, from the 1995 Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey, which match individual employees to the firms and workplaces at which they are employed, this paper examines the relative importance of both individual and workplace characteristics for wages. Results from the estimation of ‘effects’ models indicate that workplace‐specific effects are important, explaining 39 per cent of the variation in individual log hourly wages. Estimation of a model including both individual‐level and workplace‐level variables (and using a random effects approach) identified workplace size, foreign ownership, the significance of export markets, the gender composition of the workforce, workplace ..