Afternoon Must-Read: Arindrajit Dube, Laura Giuliano, and Jonathan Leonard: Fairness and Frictions: The Impact of Unequal Raises on Quit Behavior

…discrete pay steps created discontinuities in raises, where workers initially earning within 1 cent of each other got raises that differed by 10 cents…. We find large causal effects of wages on quits…. The large effects of wages on quits mostly reflects relative-pay concerns and not market comparisons…. After accounting for peer effects, quits do not appear to be very sensitive to wages–suggesting substantial employer wage–setting power…. The relative-pay concerns are asymmetric… driven mainly by workers who are paid below their peers, suggesting concerns about fairness or disadvantageous inequity.