Joint work with Aslan Bakirov and Francesco Del Prato. Under review.
Abstract. How much wage dispersion is visible in characteristics we observe? Using Portuguese matched employer-employee records linked to firm financial data, we sort workers and firms into observable cells and decompose log wages across worker-firm cells. Worker cells account for 35.0% of the variance, firm cells 6.7%, sorting 8.8%, and a worker-firm interaction 6.7%; the remaining 42.8% lies within cells. A second exercise splits the firm component into what firms pay similar workers (pay policy) and whom they employ (workforce composition). Pay policy dominates, accounting for about two-thirds of the firm component’s variance, and the two margins reinforce: higher-paying firms employ higher-wage workforces. Holding observable cells fixed across Portugal’s recovery, the fall in log-wage variance is explained by changing cell wage schedules rather than by workforce reallocation or re-sorting. The two-sided structure usually credited to latent worker and firm effects is thus visible in observed characteristics on the worker side, much less so on the firm side.