Estimating the Employer Switching Costs and Wage Responses of Forward-Looking Engineers

This article estimates worker switching costs and how much the employer switching of experienced engineers responds to outside wage offers. I use data on engineers across Swedish private sector firms to estimate the relative importance of employer wage policies and switching costs in a dynamic programming, discrete choice model of employer choice. The differentiated firms are modeled in employer characteristic space, and each firm has its own age-wage profile. A majority of engineers have moderately high switching costs and a minority of experienced workers are responsive to outside wage offers. Younger workers are more sensitive to outside wage offers.