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Skill Groups (skill + groups)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting80%

Selected Abstracts

Economic development and fluctuations in earnings inequality in the very long run: The evidence from Latin America 1900,2000

JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 8 2008
Valpy FitzGerald
Abstract Latin America has the most unequal income distribution of any region in the world, yet its historical causes are poorly understood. This paper reports the first exploratory attempt to compute income distributions for the five leading Latin American economies for the whole 20th century. The methodology produces estimates of earnings dispersion for four skill groups over 1900,2000, which can be used to generate the familiar Gini coefficients. Large fluctuations in dispersion over time are found: countering claims of stability since the colonial past in the recent economic institutions literature; but supporting the findings of economic historians and development economists. An estimation model (reflecting the impact of international trade, labour quality and macroeconomic imbalances) explains the data reasonably well, with all three sets of drivers proving significant, although the measured effects are different across the five countries. The paper concludes that the skill composition of the workforce not only underpins long run trends in income distribution; but also conditions inequality fluctuations in response to exogenous shocks. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Immigration Policy, Equilibrium Unemployment, and Underinvestment in Human Capital

LABOUR, Issue 1 2009
Christian Lumpe
We analyse the impact of different immigration policies on human capital investment in a search-theoretic model. This class of models features unemployment and underinvestment in human capital. The underinvestment in human capital can be solved by combining immigration policy with appropriate education subsidies. Extending the model with respect to different skill groups allows to analyse the observed bimodal skilled immigration of the USA. [source]

Reasons for Wage Rigidity in Germany

LABOUR, Issue 2 2006
Wolfgang Franz
Based on a survey of 801 firms in Germany and an econometric analysis, we find strong support for explanations based on the effects of labour union contracts and efficiency wages that differ between skill groups. Survey respondents indicate that labour union contracts and implicit contracts are important reasons for wage rigidity for the (less) skilled. Specific human capital and negative signals for new hires are causes of the stickiness of wages for the highly skilled. Compared with US evidence, German firms seem to attach more importance to labour union contracts and specific human capital. [source]

A PICTURE OF JOB INSECURITY FACING BRITISH MEN

THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 476 2002
Stephen Nickell
This paper considers three aspects of the job insecurity facing British men in the last two decades. The probability of becojming unemployed, the costs of unemployment in terms of real wage losses and the probability that the continuously employed will experience substantial real wage losses. The first of these has not risen in the last two decades, the secojnd has risen by around 40% and the third has risen, particularly for the top skill groups. [source]

The Evolution of Individual Male Earnings in Great Britain: 1975,95

THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 460 2000
Richard Dickens
I study the dynamic structure of male wages in Great Britain using the New Earnings Survey Panel from 1975,95. Computing auto-covariances of individual wages by cohort I find evidence of a permanent component of earnings that increases over the life cycle and a highly persistent, serially correlated transitory component. In addition, the estimated variances of both these components have risen over this period, each explaining about half the rise in inequality. Using individual's occupation at age 22, I split the sample into four skill groups. I find some differences across these groups, with the rise in the permanent variance most important for the manual groups. [source]