Wages may be observed to increase with seniority because of firm-specific human capital accumulation or because of self-selection of better workers in longer jobs. In both these cases the upward sloping wage profile in cross sectional regressions would reflect higher productivity of more senior workers. If this were true, the observation of an effect of seniority on wages would depend on the presence of controls for individual productivity. In this paper we replicate, using personnel data from a large Italian firm, the results of the pioneering work of Medoff and Abraham (1980 and 1981) in which supervisors' evaluations were used as productivity indicators. Since the validity of supervisors' evaluations as measures of productivity has been widely criticised, we extend the work of Medo and Abraham using dierent direct measures of productivity based on recorded absenteeism and misconduct episodes. Both these indicators and supervisors' evaluation suggest that the observed effect of seniority...

Fundamentally, poverty reduction is about bringing growth processes to poor areas. Because poor areas can benefit from technical and organizational innovations made elsewhere in the world, it is possible today to create productive jobs faster and in greater quantity than ever before. The puzzle is what helps spread such "best practices." Saving, investment, education, resources, and new technology are all needed---and fairly easy to obtain. What is hard to obtain are the institutions that allow these factors of production to be combined and translated into productive job creation. Firms are the key vehicles that spread best practices and productive jobs to areas where poor people live. Because we can never be sure which firm will be successful, it is necessary that new firms can enter markets, that substandard firms are allowed to fail, and that good firms face few barriers to growth. This is the definition of competition, and competition is what selects good firms and thus drives the spread of best practice and productive jobs. Governments need to provide the framework, in which capable firms can emerge. Yet, the right mix of state activity and how it best interacts with firms are not fully understood. Some selection mechanism, which allows for policy experiments and selects successful ones, is valuable for national, provincial, and local governments. Thus competition among jurisdictions and firms is an integral part of dynamic social systems that hold promise for creating wealth and ending poverty. WAYSOUT OF POVERTY TABLEOF CONTENTS List of Boxes ....................................................................................................................... 4 I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY....................................................................................