			Home About us Contact

Wage Distribution (wage + distribution)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	95%

Selected Abstracts

Noncontractible Heterogeneity in Directed Search

ECONOMETRICA, Issue 4 2010
Michael Peters
This paper provides a directed search model designed to explain the residual part of wage variation left over after the impact of education and other observable worker characteristics have been removed. Workers have private information about their characteristics at the time they apply for jobs. Firms value these characteristics differently and can observe them once workers apply. They hire the worker they most prefer. However, the characteristics are not contractible, so firms cannot condition their wages on them. This paper shows how to extend arguments from directed search to handle this, allowing for arbitrary distributions of worker and firm types. The model is used to provide a functional relationship that ties together the wage distribution and the wage,duration function. This relationship provides a testable implication of the model. This relationship suggests a common property of wage distributions that guarantees that workers who leave unemployment at the highest wages also have the shortest unemployment duration. This is in strict contrast to the usual (and somewhat implausible) directed search story in which high wages are always accompanied by higher probability of unemployment. [source]

Caught in a Trap?

ECONOMICA, Issue 268 2000
Wage Mobility in Great Britain: 197
In this paper I study wage mobility in Great Britain using the New Earnings Surveys of 1975,94 and the British Household Panel Surveys of 1991,94. Measuring mobility in terms of decile transition matrices, I find a considerable degree of immobility within the wage distribution from one year to the next. Mobility is higher when measured over longer time periods. Those in lower deciles in the wage distribution are much more likely to exit into unemployment and non-employment. Measuring mobility by studying changes in individuals' actual percentile rankings in the wage distribution, I find evidence that short-run mobility rates have fallen since the late 1970s. This has potentially important welfare implications, given the rise in cross-section earnings inequality observed over the last two decades. [source]

Mind the Gap, Please: The Changing Nature of Entry Jobs in Britain

ECONOMICA, Issue 268 2000
Paul Gregg
We examine wages in jobs taken by those out of work,entry jobs,and the characteristics of the individuals who fill them. There are large entry wage gaps relative to other jobs. More importantly, real entry wages have fallen by around 20 log points relative to all other jobs since 1979. One-quarter of this decline is accounted for by differences in individual and job characteristics and around 40% from an unexplained fall in the position of entry jobs in the wage distribution. That entry wages differ from the stock of all wages should be incorporated into labour supply modelling. [source]

Gender Wage Differences in West Germany: A Cohort Analysis

GERMAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 4 2002
Bernd Fitzenberger
A comprehensive descriptive analysis of gender wage differences over a long time period does not exist for West Germany. Using an empirical approach which explicitly takes into account changes of wage distributions for both males and females as well as life,cycle and birth cohort effects, we go beyond conventional decomposition techniques of the average gender wage gap. The paper provides stylized facts of the level and dynamics of the gender wage gap from 1975,95. The empirical analysis is based upon the IAB employment subsample. Our findings confirm the importance of distributional effects relating to skill level and employment status. While life,cycle wage growth is in general much lower for females compared to males, comparing their estimated time trends implies that the gender wage gap has narrowed substantially in the lower part of the wage distribution especially for low, and medium,skilled females but much less so in the upper part of the wage distribution. Surprisingly, we do not find any cohort effects for wages of female employees. [source]

AN ON-THE-JOB SEARCH MODEL OF CRIME, INEQUALITY, AND UNEMPLOYMENT*

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 3 2004
Kenneth Burdett
We extend simple search models of crime, unemployment, and inequality to incorporate on-the-job search. This is valuable because, although simple models are useful, on-the-job search models are more interesting theoretically and more relevant empirically. We characterize the wage distribution, unemployment rate, and crime rate theoretically, and use quantitative methods to illustrate key results. For example, we find that increasing the unemployment insurance replacement rate from 53 to 65 percent increases unemployment and crime rates from 10 and 2.7 percent to 14 and 5.2 percent. We show multiple equilibria arise for some fairly reasonable parameters; in one case, unemployment can be 6 or 23 percent, and crime 0 or 10 percent, depending on the equilibrium. [source]

Labour Policy and Determinants of Employment and Wages in a Developing Economy with Labour Shortage

LABOUR, Issue 2 2010
Ibrahim Mohamed Abdalla
Using data from a sample of 1,099 workers, this paper investigates the determinants of employment and wages for workers in the United Arab Emirates. The paper further examines the wage distribution and the decomposition of the wage gap between the public and the private sectors. Results of the study are consistent with the dual labour market theory and indicate that the labour market in the United Arab Emirates is segmented based on sectors (public versus private) and types of workers (nationals versus non-nationals). The study concludes with a discussion of the implication of these findings for the effectiveness of labour and economic policy. [source]

Estimating the Impact of the Minimum Wage Using Geographical Wage Variation,

OXFORD BULLETIN OF ECONOMICS & STATISTICS, Issue 2002
Mark B. Stewart
Abstract This paper evaluates the impact on employment of the UK's introduction of a minimum wage in 1999 by exploiting the geographical variation in wages, which meant that the minimum wage's ,bite' into an area's wage distribution differed considerably across the country. The results indicate that, although the minimum wage had differential wage-distribution effects across the 140 areas of the country, employment growth after its introduction was not significantly lower in areas of the country with a high proportion of low-wage workers, whose wages had to be raised to comply, from that in areas with a low proportion of such workers. [source]

The Persistence of the Female Wage Disadvantage

THE AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 1 2001
Anh T. Le
Studies of the Australian labour market during the 1980s reported that the gender wage differential narrowed. However, a different story emerged during the 1990s when the gender pay gap persisted. A large part of the pay gap is attributable to different ,treatments' of men and women in the labour market. This article examines whether the female wage-disadvantaged state is a temporary or permanent phenomenon. The results show that while there is some mobility in the female wage distribution, there also exists a high degree of stickiness. It is argued that the wage-disadvantaged state for females is generally not a temporary phenomenon. [source]

Glass Ceiling or Sticky Floor?

THE ECONOMIC RECORD, Issue 259 2006
Exploring the Australian Gender Pay Gap
Using the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, this paper analyses the gender wage gaps across the wage distribution in both the public and private sectors in Australia. Quantile regression techniques are used to control for various characteristics at different points of the wage distributions. Counterfactual decomposition analysis, adjusted for the quantile regression framework, is used to examine if the gap is attributed to gender differences in characteristics, or to the differing returns between genders. The main finding is that a strong glass ceiling effect is detected only in the private sector. A second finding is that the acceleration in the gender gap across the distribution does not vanish even after account is taken of an extensive set of statistical controls. This suggests that the observed wage gap is a result of differences in returns to genders. By focusing only on the mean gender wage gap, substantial variations of the gap will be hidden. [source]

THE EFFECT OF THE COLLECTIVE BARGAINING LEVEL ON THE GENDER WAGE GAP: EVIDENCE FROM SPAIN,

THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL, Issue 3 2008
FLORENTINO FELGUEROSO
Several studies have found a negative relationship between the level of collective bargaining centralization and the degree of wage inequality. So, more centralized bargaining seems to lead to lower wage gaps. On the other hand, there is evidence that the gender wage gap increases as we move upwards along the wage distribution, illustrating the glass ceiling hypothesis. In this paper we study how the wage gap changes throughout the distribution of wages, as a function of the level of collective bargaining by which workers are covered, using data from the Spanish Wage Structure Survey of 2002. [source]

The Covariance Structure of Italian Male Wages

THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL, Issue 6 2000
Lorenzo Cappellari
Using an unbalanced panel of Italian male wages covering the 1974,88 interval, in this study we estimate the parameters of the wage covariance structure by minimum distance. Estimated variance components models allow for a linear trend in permanent wages, so that wage profile convergence can be assessed by considering the covariance between intercepts and slopes of such individual trends. Evidence of permanent wage convergence is found in the overall wage distribution, but not within white collar workers data; this contrasts with human capital interpretations of wage dynamics and suggests that other factors, such as the egalitarian wage-setting framework fully effective until the mid-1980s, could have played a major role in shaping the wage distribution. [source]

Decomposing changes in wage distributions: a unified approach

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS, Issue 4 2002
Thomas Lemieux
Over the last fifteen years, many researchers have attempted to explain the determinants and changes of wage inequality. I propose a simple procedure to decompose changes in the distribution of wages or in other distributions into three factors: changes in regression coefficients; the distribution of covariates, and residuals. The procedure requires only estimating standard OLS regressions augmented by a logit or probit model. It can be extended by modelling residuals as a function of unmeasured skills and skill prices. Two empirical examples showing how the procedure works in practice are considered. In the first example, sources of differences in the wage distribution in Alberta and British Columbia are considered; in the second, sources of change in overall wage inequality in the United States, 1973,99, are re,examined. Finally, the proposed procedure is compared with existing procedures. JEL classification: J3 La décomposition des changements dans les distributions de salaires : une approche unifée. Au cours des quinze dernières années, nombre d'études se sont penchées sur les déterminants et les changements de la distribution des salaires. Ce mémoire propose une procédure pour décomposer les changements de la distribution des salaires en trois éléments: les changements dans les coefficients de régression, la distribution des regresseurs et les changements résiduels. Cette procédure ne nécessite que l'estimation de regressions par moindre carrés ordinaires et d'un modèle probit ou logit. L'auteur montre aussi comment modéliser les résidus en fonction de compétences non mesurées. La procédure proposée est mise en application dans le contexte de deux exemples: la distribution des salaires en Alberta et en Colombie,Britannique et les changements dans la distribution des salaires de 1973 à 1999 aux Etats,Unis. Le mémoire examine aussi comment cette procédure se compare aux méthodes proposées par d'autres chercheurs. [source]

Noncontractible Heterogeneity in Directed Search

Placing Progress: Contextual Inequality and Immigrant Incorporation in the United States

ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY, Issue 3 2008
Jamie Goodwin-White
Abstract This article contributes to the growing body of research on the economic incorporation of immigrants by considering the relative wages of immigrants, the adult children of immigrants, and the U.S.-born children of U.S. parentage. By disaggregating these three groups racially, comparing entire wage distributions, and comparing the immigrant cities of New York and Los Angeles with the United States overall, it presents a perspective on the complicated contexts of the intergenerational progress of immigrants. In addition to comparing the groups' relative positions in 1990 and 2000, the article decomposes relative wages such that differences in the educational composition of groups can be isolated from residual wage inequality. This research is of interest because consideration of the U.S.-born or educated children of immigrants invokes questions of social mobility and the persistence of ethnic inequality more generally. The article also contributes to a theoretical debate over place and immigrants' progress by examining the second generation, for whom residence in immigrant cities is often theorized as detrimental to economic incorporation. Finally, it introduces a substantial analysis of local wage structures to questions of immigrants' intergenerational economic progress to a much greater extent than has previously been the case. The results suggest that prospects for immigrants' economic incorporation are geographically specific and should be assessed across multiple generations as a result of the continuing contexts of racial wage inequality [source]

Gender Wage Differences in West Germany: A Cohort Analysis

Changing Pay Systems, Occupational Concentration and the Gender Pay Gap: Evidence from Australia and the UK

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL, Issue 3 2001
Damian Grimshaw
While aggregate level pay equity comparisons between Australia and the UK confirm expectations based on their different wage distributions and regulatory systems, observation of trends and occupational level analysis reveal additional complexity. Our analysis suggests the need for a multi-faceted approach to closing the average gender pay gap. [source]

Equilibrium Search with Continuous Productivity Dispersion: Theory and Nonparametric Estimation

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 2 2000
Christian Bontemps
In this article we develop an equilibrium search model with a continuous distribution of firm productivity types within a given labor market. We characterize equilibrium, derive expressions for the endogenous equilibrium wage distributions, and characterize the set of wage distributions that can be generated by the model. We develop a structural nonparametric estimation method for the productivity distribution. We estimate the model using French longitudinal survey data on labor supply, and we compare the results with those from a French panel data set of firms. The results are informative on the degree to which firms exploit search frictions. [source]