Christina Gathmann

How do bosses affect the labor market careers of workers? We use rich employer-employee data for Norway matched to survey information on firm hierarchies to study the role of bosses for wages, promotions and turnover of their subordinates. Our estimation strategy extends approaches used for peer effects to study vertical relationship within firms (‘boss effects’). We find that more able bosses raise the wages of their subordinates significantly though effects are more moderate than found in prior case studies. We document strong effects on promotion, but small effects on turnover. We find a stronger impact of bosses for knowledge-intensive occupations and higher up in the firm hierarchy, while heterogeneity across worker age or gender is modest.