Labor Market Dynamics and Wage Losses of Displaced Workers in France and the United States

The objective of this paper is to provide a comparative assessment of the consequences of worker displacement in France and the United-States. I estimate wage losses of displaced workers in the two countries and examine the relative contribution of two important sources of post-displacement wage adjustments. The first one relates to the loss of seniority-accumulated firmspecific earnings potential. The second one arises from match heterogeneity. Identification of the relative contribution of these two sources can be achieved given separate estimates of returns to seniority. I show that while the order of magnitude of total wage losses are comparable in the two economies (10 to 15%), the sources of wage adjustment differ strongly: all of the wage decline in France seems to be due to the loss of accumulated firm specific earning potential, while in the US, more than half of measured wage losses arise from a downgrading into lower quality job matches.