Earnings Inequality and Coordination Costs: Evidence from U.S. Law Firms

55 Pages Posted: 20 Sep 2009

See all articles by Luis Garicano

Luis Garicano

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); IE Business School

Thomas N. Hubbard

Northwestern University - Department of Management & Strategy; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: September 1, 2009

Abstract

Earnings inequality has increased substantially since the 1970s. Using evidence from confidential Census data on U.S. law offices on lawyers’ organization and earnings, we study the extent to which the mechanism suggested by Lucas (1978) and Rosen (1982), a scale of operations effect linking spans of control and earnings inequality, is responsible for increases in inequality. We first show that earnings inequality among lawyers increased substantially between 1977 and 1992, and that the distribution of partner-associate ratios across offices changed in ways consistent with the hypothesis that coordination costs fell during this period. We then propose a 'hierarchical production function' in which output is the product of skill and time and estimate its parameters, applying insights from the equilibrium assignment literature. We find that coordination costs fell broadly and steadily during this period, so that hiring one’s first associate leveraged a partner’s skill by about 30% more in 1992 than 1977. We find also that changes in lawyers’ hierarchical organization account for about 2/3 of the increase in earnings inequality among lawyers in the upper tail, but a much smaller share of the increase in inequality between lawyers in the upper tail and other lawyers. These findings indicate that new organizational efficiencies potentially explain increases in inequality, especially among individuals toward the top of the earnings distribution.

Suggested Citation

Garicano, Luis and Garicano, Luis and Hubbard, Thomas N., Earnings Inequality and Coordination Costs: Evidence from U.S. Law Firms (September 1, 2009). US Census Bureau Center for Economic Studies Paper No. CES-WP 09-24, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1475742 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1475742

Luis Garicano

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

London
United Kingdom

IE Business School ( email )

Calle María de Molina, 11
Madrid, 28006
Spain

Thomas N. Hubbard (Contact Author)

Northwestern University - Department of Management & Strategy ( email )

Kellogg School of Management
2001 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL 60208
United States

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

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