We use a rich new body of data on the experiences of unemployed job seekers to determine the sources of wage dispersion and to create a search model consistent with the acceptance decisions the job seekers made. We identify the distributions of four key variables: offered wages, offered nonwage job values, job seekers' nonwork alternatives, and job seekers' personal productivities. We find that, conditional on personal productivity, the standard deviation of offered log wages is moderate, at 0.24, whereas the dispersion of the offered nonwage component is substantially larger, at 0.34. The resulting dispersion of offered job values is 0.38.
Murtin, Fabrice & de Serres, Alain & Hijzen, Alexander, 2014. "Unemployment and the coverage extension of collective wage agreements," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 52-66.
Fabrice Murtin & Alain De Serres & Alexander Hijzen, 2014. "Unemployment and the coverage extension of collective wage agreements," Sciences Po publications info:hdl:2441/6jq9vl5fsi9, Sciences Po.
Wage Dispersion and Search Behavior: The Importance of Non-Wage Job Values (JPE 2018) in ReplicationWiki