The Extent of Rent Sharing along the Wage Distribution
The relation between rent sharing and wages has generally been evaluated on
average wages. This article uses a unique employer–employee panel database to
investigate the extent of rent sharing along the wage distribution in Italy. We
apply quantile regression techniques and control for national level bargaining,
unobserved worker and firm heterogeneity and endogeneity. Our findings show
that the extent of rent sharing decreases along the wage distribution, suggesting
that unskilled workers benefit most from firms’ rents. By applying quantile
regressions by occupational categories, we show that the decreasing pattern is
mainly driven by blue collar workers, while estimates for white collars are higher
and basically constant along the wage distribution.We also provide evidence that
unions might represent one of the drivers of our findings.