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Applied research shows higher wages are associated with lower mobility at the establishment level. A usual interpretation is that high pay decreases labour turnover. The purpose of this paper is to test if such relationship holds for every type of worker in every type of firm.

The analysis is based on a linked employer-employee panel dataset covering the French private sector from 2002 to 2005. The authors compute establishment wage effects and use them as explanatory variables in labour mobility equations (for churning rate and quit rate). Using spline regression models enables to investigate for potential non-linearities.

The authors show that the relationship between churning rate and wage is non-linear and has the shape of an inverted J: the relation is negative and intense for establishments with low wage effect, weaker for average paying establishments and even becomes positive for very high-paying ones. This is true whatever the skill group of workers. It is also true for large establishments while the relationship is still negative but linear for small ones. The relationship between wages and quit rates has a strikingly similar pattern. This suggests that the link between churning and establishment wage effect is strongly related to quit decisions.

A possible interpretation of our results is that paying higher wages may be an effective stabilizing tool especially for employers in small establishments and when starting wages are relatively low.

The paper is the first to decompose the relationship between wage and mobility. It shows the relationship differs across establishment size and is not linear. The paper also shows quits play a role in this relationship.

La décision de la Ville de Montreux de célébrer, au milieu de ce siècle, le 100e anniversaire de son tourisme, a surpris certains et provoqué ailleurs quelques remarques.

On Justification: Economies of Worth (Boltanski & Thévenot, 1991/2006) was a synthetic and comprehensive parsing of common goods, goods that could and had to be justified in public. In response to Bourdieu’s critical sociology, they rather provided a robust and disciplined sociology of critique, the situated requirements of justification. They refused power and violence as integral to the operability of justification. They emphasized the ways in which conventions of worth afforded coordination, not their constitution of or by domination. They refused to make either capitalism, or the state, into primary motors of social order. Indeed, they refused social sphere, structure, or group as the ground of the good. They emphasized the cognitive capacities of agents. There was no passion, no desire, no bodily affect in these justified worlds. There wasn’t even any account of production of value, of children, or of money. And while they recognized the metaphysical aspect of the good and even used Christianity as a template for one of their cités, they rigorously excluded religion. The theory was designed to analyze moments of controversy, not quiescence or quietude. In his subsequent work, Boltanski aimed to address these absences. In this essay, we examine how Boltanski sought to restore love, violence, religion, production, and institution across five texts: Love and Justice as Competences (1990/2012), The New Spirit of Capitalism, co-authored with Eve Chiapello (1999/2007), The Foetal Condition: A Sociology of Engendering and Abortion (2004/2013), On Critique: A Sociology of Emancipation (2009/2011), and La «Collection», Une Forme Neuve du Capitalisme – La Mise en Valeur Economique du Passé et ses Effets (2014) co-authored with Arnaud Esquerre.