Incentives and earnings growth

The career prospects of newly recruited employees differ substantially within an organization. The stars experience considerable growth in earnings; others can hardly maintain their entry salaries. This article sheds light on the mechanisms generating the observed heterogeneity in earnings growth by investigating the effects that explicit short-run incentives and implicit incentives have on earnings growth. The model's predictions are tested using personnel records from a large bank and are found to be consistent with the observed earnings growth during the first half of the employees’ careers.