The future of personnel economics

Personnel economics has grown over the past 20 years to become a major bran ch of labour economics. Although much has been learned, many important ques tions remain. For example, are worker wage profiles dependent on individual attributes or is the firm more important in determining wage growth? Why a re executives so highly paid and why does pay take the form that it does! H ow can cross-country differences in pay patterns be explained? Does variabl e pay provide better incentives than fixed hourly wages, Under which circum stances is one form of compensation used over another! These questions and others are investigated and some conjectures offered.