Volume 37, Number 2 (Spring) 2002
Ippolito, Richard A. 2002. "Stayers as "Savers" and "Workers" : Toward Reconciling the Pension Quit Literature." Journal of Human Resources 37(2):275-308.
The classic selection effect posits that deferred wages attract "stayers." The results in this paper suggest an alternative explanation. Deferred wage contracts attract "savers." All else constant, savers are better workers than nonsavers. A firm naturally works harder to retain better workers, and thus, is led to pay them higher wages; thereby encouraging savers to remain in the firm's employ. This process creates a confluence of deferred wages, high levels of compensation and low quit propensities. In this explanation, "staying" is merely the result of a selection process, and not the underlying factor that drives selection.
Richard Ippolito is a professor of economics at George Mason University School of Law. The author is indebted to Mike Dove at the Defense Manpower Defense Agency for providing large amounts of useful data. and to John Thompson for setting up all the data in usable data sets amenable to analysis, and for solving many data problems that arose over the period of my research. He also is grateful for the work of three referees who provided detailed comments and suggestions that led to marked improvements in the paper. His research was partly funded by the George Mason University School of Law. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning September 2002 through August 2005 from Richard Ippolito, GMU School of Law, 3401 N. Faiifax Drive, Arlington, VA 22201.
© 2003 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X