THE IMPLICATIONS OF JOB MATCHING FOR RETIREMENT HEALTH-INSURANCE AND LEAVE BENEFITS

This paper focuses on potential reasons for variations in benefit pack ages, in particular variations in the availability of retirement healt h insurance and leave. An important feature of our analysis is that we do not start with heterogeneity in workforces to explain fringe benef it differences across employers. It would be straightforward to say th at differences across employers in fringe benefit packages simply repr esent differences in the preferences of their workforces. Rather, we f ocus on heterogeneity across employers as an important source of diffe rences in fringe benefit packages. Preliminary evidence is found suppo rtive of the predicted differences in the likelihood of such fringe be nefits as retirement health insurance and leave based upon two variabl es the extent of on-the-job training offered by the employer and the s ize of the employer. We also examine the implied links between these f ringe benefits and such variables as average tenure and the proportion of the workforce that is female.