TRADE-INDUCED SKILL POLARIZATION

We study how wage gaps across skills and the skill distribution in an economy respond to trade integration. Using administrative data of Denmark (1995–2011), we find that trade has a negative effect on the wage gap between secondary and primary education and a positive effect on the wage gap between tertiary and secondary education. We also show that trade affects skill distribution and induces skill polarization: trade has a positive effect on both the mean and standard deviation of skills. Wage-gap changes induced by trade shocks explain about 21%–30% of the effect of trade on skills.     

The reverse wage gap among educated White and Black women

Using the 2004 National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses and the 2004–2005 American Community Surveys, we estimate the Black–White wage gap among females with at least some college education. We find that Black female nurses earn 9% more at the mean and median than White female nurses, controlling for selection into nursing employment. Among K-12 teachers, Black females earn 7% more than White females at the median. There is no Black–White wage gap among all women with a bachelor’s degree. Differences in opportunities for education and marriage between White and Black women may explain why highly educated Black females earn on par with highly educated White females.     

How information technology affects wages: Evidence using internet usage as a proxy for IT skills

Many research studies have found a positive link between information technology (IT) in the work place and wages. Using data from the December, 1998 Current Population Survey, we examine the impact of IT, as proxied by on-the-job Internet usage, on wages. After controlling for selectivity bias, we estimate an average wage gain of 13.5 percent for on-the- job Internet usage. This wage advantage is consistent with estimates from studies based on data collected earlier in the 1990s examining the impact of computers in the workplace. We also tested for differences across industries in the manufacturing sector. We conclude that industries marked by less intensive use of technology offered significantly higher wage premiums than industries characterized by more intensive use of technology. This finding undermines the argument that higher wages go to those working in high-tech firms, not to those with high IT skills. We also find evidence that high-tech firms sort workers by skill level, which is also consistent with earlier studies.     

PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH IN GOODS AND SERVICES ACROSS THE HETEROGENEOUS STATES OF AMERICA

In this study, we examine the importance of multifactor productivity (MFP) growth in goods and services for U.S. States during 1980–2007 by applying the dual growth accounting framework. We find that MFP growth was relatively high and converged in the goods sector, but was low and did not converge in services. Although low growth in MFP in services was due to declining real user cost, particularly in real estate services, the lack of convergence itself was due to variation in wage growth. We also document that while the gap between productivity and wage growth was higher in goods, the two series were more strongly correlated in services. Finally, states with higher initial human capital experienced higher growth in both sectors. (JEL O47, R11)     

Exit Discrimination in the NBA: A Duration Analysis of Career Length

Using a panel study of annual NBA data (1989–99) we do not find evidence of exit discrimination on career length in the NBA. This result is inconsistent with results from data in the 1980s but is consistent with more recent findings that have measured wage discrimination in sports in the 1990s. In our semiparametric duration analysis, we find that performance variables are important in determining career length. These results suggest that team owners in the pursuit of championships keep talented players regardless of race. This is an affirmation of Becker's theoretical implications of market competition on discrimination. (JEL J71 , J23 )     

THE AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY GAP IN EUROPE

For 15 European countries over the 1970–2004 period we find large and persistent agricultural productivity gaps, the ratio of value added per hour in nonagriculture to that in agriculture. Comparing the gap in value added per hour to the wage gap between the two sectors suggests that value added in the data is mismeasured. We further find that, controlling for differences in gross domestic product per capita and institutions, the mismeasurement is positively related to self‐employed share of hours in agriculture. Correcting for underreporting of self‐employment income using our preferred correction factor reduces the measured agricultural productivity gap by 38%. These findings suggest that underreporting can account for a significant portion of the measured agricultural productivity gap. (JEL E01, O47, O52, Q10)     

A tale of two decades: Relative intra-family earning capacity and changes in family welfare over time

The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of economic changes in the 1990s and 2000s on the welfare of married households, taking into account the relative earnings structure of husband and wife. Modeling the household members’ joint labor supply, we find that families in which the wife is the higher wage earner experienced as much welfare gain in the 1990s and significantly higher welfare gains in the 2000s as families in which the husband is the higher wage earner.     

Can Benefits and Work Incentives Counseling be a Path to Future Economic Self-Sufficiency for Individuals with Disabilities?

In this paper, I estimate the relationship between benefit counseling and work incentive services and various labor market outcomes in the case of Supplemental Security Income /Social Security Disability Insurance beneficiaries who from 2003 to 2009 participated in the Vocational Rehabilitation programs in New York State. Using the propensity score matching approach, I find that counseling services can increase the probability of successful case closure by 5.2 percentage points. At the same time, these services can increase the earnings and working hours of beneficiaries by $42 and 3.3 h per week, respectively. Moreover, there is a $0.59 per hour increase in the wage rate for service recipients. From these results I conclude that providing benefit counseling and work incentive services helps beneficiaries who have strong employment goals achieve financial independence.     

Educational Attainment and the Lesbian Wage Premium

This paper provides insight into the wage gap between lesbians and heterosexual women. Using data from the 2000 Decennial Census, we find a lesbian premium that equals approximately 10% for women without a bachelor’s degree, and is nearly non-existent for women with higher levels of education. These findings are consistent with proposition that the gap between lesbians’ and heterosexual women’s commitment to the labor market narrows at higher levels of education. We also find that controls for industry and occupation exert only a small effect on the gap between lesbian and heterosexual women’s wages.

Women’s Tertiary Education Masks the Gender Wage Gap in Turkey

This paper investigates the gender wage gap for full-time formal sector employees, disaggregated by education level. The gap between the labor force participation rate of women with tertiary education and those with lower levels of education is substantial. There is no such gap for men. Hence, existing gender wage gap studies for Turkey, where we observe lopsided labor force participation rates by education levels, compare two very different populations. We disaggregate the whole sample by education level to create more homogenous sub-groups. For Turkey, without disaggregation, the gender wage gap was 13% in 2011, and women are significantly over-qualified relative to men on observed characteristics. Once we disaggregate the sample by education level, we show that the gender wage gap is 24% for less educated women and 9% for women with tertiary education in full-time formal employment. Observed characteristics only explain 1 % of this gap in absolute terms. We further disaggregate the data by public and private employment. The gender gap is higher in the private sector. However, women with tertiary education in the public sector are significantly better qualified compared to men, and consequently the adjusted gender wage gap is higher for women with tertiary education in the public sector. Our estimates also indicate a rise in the gender wage gap between 2004 and 2011.     

Work hours,social value of leisure and globalisation

We examine how openness interacts with the coordination of consumption–leisure decisions in determining the equilibrium working hours and wage rate when there are leisure externalities (e.g., due to social interactions). The latter are modelled by allowing a worker's marginal utility of leisure to be increasing in the leisure time taken by other workers. Coordination takes the form of internalising the leisure externality and other relevant constraints (e.g., labour demand). The extent of openness is measured by the degree of capital mobility. We find that: coordination lowers equilibrium work hours and raises the wage rate; there is a U-shaped (inverse-U-shaped) relationship between work hours (wages) and the degree of coordination; coordination is welfare improving; and, the gap between the coordinated and uncoordinated work hours (and the corresponding wage rates) is affected by the extent and nature of openness.     

Stagnation only on the surface? The implications of skill and family responsibilities for the gender wage gap in Sweden, 1974–2010

The wage differential between women and men persists in advanced economies despite the inflow of women into qualified occupations in recent years. Using five waves of the Swedish Level‐of‐Living Survey (LNU), this paper explores the gender wage gap in Sweden during the 1974–2010 period overall and by skill level. The empirical analyses showed that the general gender wage gap has been nearly unchanged for the past 30 years. However, the gender difference in wage in less qualified occupations fell considerably, whereas the gender pay gap remained stable for men and women in qualified occupations. The larger significance of family responsibilities for wages in qualified occupations is one likely explanation for this result.     

Union wage premiums by gender and race: Evidence from PSID 1980–1992

We find that the overall union wage premium is relatively stable (ranging from 22.3 to 28.4 percent), but there seems to be a convergence of union wage premiums across different demographic groups between 1980 and 1992. Nonwhite men (whose premium ranges from 23.5 to 36.2 percent) show the largest gain, followed by white women (17.1 to 30.5 percent), white men (19 to 26.4 percent), and nonwhite women (10 to 20 percent). One explanation for this convergence of union wage premiums might be the “equalization hypothesis” associated with unions. This converging trend could have important implications for the future of unions. If union membership can explain a portion of the gender/racial wage gap, and if women/nonwhites can obtain, through union membership significant wage premia, increased female/nonwhite union participation in highly unionized sectors that offer high union wage gains could, in time, greatly decrease the gender/racial wage differential. This study was supported in part by National Science Foundation funds [OSR-9350540]. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Southern Economic Association conference in New Orleans in 1995. We thank Emilia Lulcheva and Michael Lauze for their able research assistance and William Warren for his valuable editorial comments on an earlier draft of this paper. The usual caveat applies.     

Firm Ownership and Rent Sharing

In this paper we analyse—theoretically and empirically—how the degree of private versus public ownership of firms affects the degree of rent sharing between firms and their workers. Using a particularly rich linked employer-employee dataset from Portugal, covering a large number of corporate ownership changes across a wide spectrum of economic sectors over more than 20 years, we find that rent sharing is significantly higher in firms with a larger share of private ownership. Estimates from our most preferred empirical specification suggest that an increase in the private ownership share of 10 percentage points increases (on average) the rent-sharing elasticity by 0.0002. Based on a theoretical analysis that incorporates union-firm wage bargaining and efficiency wage effects within the same modelling framework, this result cannot be explained by private firms being more profit oriented than public ones. However, the result is consistent with a scenario whereby privatisation leads to less job security for workers, implying stronger efficiency wage effects.     

Are the Effects of the Macroeconomy and Social Policies on Poverty Different in Nonmetro Areas in the United States?*

Abstract The macroeconomy and social policies can have substantial influences on poverty in the United States. In this paper, I investigate whether these influences differ across metro and nonmetro areas. To do so, using a 16‐year panel of state‐level data, I estimate state and year fixed effects models separately for metro and nonmetro areas to see if the effects of the macroeconomy and social policies differ between these two areas. These models are estimated using two measures—the poverty rate and the squared poverty gap—and by family type. I find that cyclical forces have a much stronger effect on the poverty rate in nonmetro areas in comparison to metro areas, but the effects are similar for the squared poverty gap; wage growth has a pronounced effect on poverty in metro areas but no effect in nonmetro areas; and state‐level social policies have slightly larger effects in nonmetro areas, but the effects are small.     

A Reexamination of Card and Krueger's State-Level Study of the Minimum Wage

Card and Krueger's (1995) difference-in-difference study of the 1990-1991 federal minimum wage hikes compared states by the proportion of workers directly affected by the minimum wage. They found "no evidence that the increase in the minimum wage significantly lowered teenage employment rates more in highly affected states" and they concluded the minimum wage did not reduce employment. Their paper was highly influential and convinced many that the minimum wage did not reduce employment. However, when I apply their model to the 1996-1997 federal minimum wage hike, I find that increases in the minimum wage significantly lowered teenage employment rates more in highly affected states. Using Card and Krueger's interpretation, this implies the minimum wage did reduce teenage employment.     

Women’s employment and the decline of home cooking: Evidence from France, 1985–2010

We here investigate the extent to which labour-market changes explain the decline in the time spent home cooking by married women in France between 1985 and 2010. Using time use data and Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions, we find that rising women’s employment and observed wages together account for about 60% of the fall in the time married women spent cooking. We then use a semi-parametric matching technique to construct an implicit wage rate, which better reflects the change in labour-market incentives that individuals face. The rise in women’s implicit wages explains no more than 20% of the decline in their cooking time, while the wage of their partner has no effect. Changing labour-market incentives are thus far from being the main driver of the decline in home-cooking. We also find evidence that home cooking continues to be structured by the gendered social norm of the “proper family meal”.     

The gender wage gap by education in Italy

This paper studies the gender wage gap by educational attainment in Italy using the 1994–2001 ECHP data. We estimate wage distributions in the presence of covariates and sample selection separately for highly and low educated men and women. Then, we decompose the gender wage gap across all the wage distribution and isolate the part due to gender differences in the remunerations of the similar characteristics. We find that women are penalized especially if low educated. When we control for sample selection induced by unobservables, the penalties for low educated women become even larger, above all at the bottom of the wage distribution.     

Household wealth and the measurement of economic well-being in the United States

We analyze the level and distribution of economic well-being in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s based on the standard measure of money income and a measure in which income from wealth is calculated as the sum of lifetime annuity from nonhome wealth and imputed rental-equivalent for owner-occupied homes. Over the 1982–2000 period, median well-being increases faster when these adjustments are made than when standard money income is used. This adjustment also widens the income gap between African-Americans and whites but increases the relative well-being of the elderly. Adding imputed rent and annuities from household wealth to household income considerably increases measured inequality and the share of income from wealth in inequality. However, both measures show about the same rise in inequality over the period. We also find an increasing share of wage and salary income in our expanded definition of income among the richest 1% over the period but do not find that the “working rich” have largely replaced rentiers at the top of the economic ladder.