TY - JOUR

T1 - Wage Structures, Fairness Perceptions, and Job Satisfaction

T2 - Evidence from Linked Employer-Employee Data

AU - Mohrenweiser, Jens

AU - Pfeifer, Christian

N1 - Funding Information: We thank participants of the 2020 Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association in San Diego, the Workshop in “Assessing the Impact of Human Resource Management Practices” 2017 in Nurnberg, the Workshop in Management Research 2017 in Wuppertal, department seminar at LUISS university Rome, as well as Andrew Clark, Stefan Schneck, Susanne Steffes, Gesine Stephan, Knut Gerlach, and reviewer of this journal for their comments. Notes : The used data is confidential and data access was provided via on-site use at the Research Data Centre (FDZ) of the German Federal Employment Agency (BA) at the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) and subsequently remote data access. For help with the data, our statistical programs in Stata, and replication studies contact Jens Mohrenweiser. Publisher Copyright: © 2023, The Author(s).

PY - 2023/10

Y1 - 2023/10

N2 - The paper investigates the impact of firms’ wage structures and workers’ wage fairness perceptions on workers’ well-being. For this purpose, worker and establishment surveys are linked with administrative social security data. Four variables are generated, using approximately half a million worker-year observations, that describe firms’ wage structures and workers’ positions within the wage structures: own absolute wages, internal reference wages within firms, external reference wages, and the wage dispersion in firms. The interrelations between these wage structure variables, workers’ perceived wage fairness, and job satisfaction are then analyzed using regressions. Interpersonal wage comparisons between co-workers in the same firm and across firms as well as wage fairness perceptions are found to be significant determinants of workers’ well-being. The overall findings suggest that equity and social status considerations as well as altruistic preferences towards co-workers and inequality aversion are more important than signal considerations in this context.

AB - The paper investigates the impact of firms’ wage structures and workers’ wage fairness perceptions on workers’ well-being. For this purpose, worker and establishment surveys are linked with administrative social security data. Four variables are generated, using approximately half a million worker-year observations, that describe firms’ wage structures and workers’ positions within the wage structures: own absolute wages, internal reference wages within firms, external reference wages, and the wage dispersion in firms. The interrelations between these wage structure variables, workers’ perceived wage fairness, and job satisfaction are then analyzed using regressions. Interpersonal wage comparisons between co-workers in the same firm and across firms as well as wage fairness perceptions are found to be significant determinants of workers’ well-being. The overall findings suggest that equity and social status considerations as well as altruistic preferences towards co-workers and inequality aversion are more important than signal considerations in this context.

KW - Fairness

KW - Income Comparison

KW - Inequality

KW - Job Satisfaction

KW - Worker Well-Being

KW - Economics

KW - Economics, empirical/statistics

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85168911003&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/713a4c01-b66a-3a77-83fd-963ceb7db166/

U2 - 10.1007/s10902-023-00680-0

DO - 10.1007/s10902-023-00680-0

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:85168911003

VL - 24

SP - 2291

EP - 2308

JO - Journal of Happiness Studies

JF - Journal of Happiness Studies

SN - 1389-4978

IS - 7

ER -