1,721,529 research outputs found
Firm heterogeneity in capital-labour ratios and wage inequality
Full text linkThis article documents the increasing dispersion of capital-labour ratios across firms in the US and provides some empirical evidence of a positive correlation at the two-digit industry level between the dispersion of capital-labour ratios across firms and residual wage inequality. To explain this empirical fact, the article adopts a search model where the exogenous decline in the relative price of equipment capital makes the distribution of capital-labour ratios more dispersed and increases wage dispersion among identical workers. OLS estimates of the relationship between capital dispersion and the relative price of equipment capital support the main hypothesis of the model. Copyright 2007 The Author(s). Journal compilation Royal Economic Society 2007.
The effect of product demand on inequality : evidence from the U.S. and the U.K
Full text linkUsing Consumer Expenditure Survey data this paper shows that more educated workers demand more high-skill-intensive services and, to a lower extent, more very low-skill-intensive services (such as personal services). Additional evidence at the MSA level shows that this "education elasticity of demand" mechanism can explain part of the correlation between the share of college-educated workers in a city and the employment share of service industries. The parametrization of a simple model suggests that this induced demand shift can explain around 6.5% of the relative demand shift in the US between 1984 and 2002. Similar results are provided for the UK
Earnings instability of job stayers and job changers
Full text linkI use the PSID to decompose the rise in wage inequality into a permanent and a transitory component. I consider separately job stayers and job changers. I find that earnings instability (the variance of the transitory component of earnings) increased much more among job changers than among job stayers. I interpret the evidence in a search and matching model with on-the-job search. The increasing variance of the transitory component of earnings is modeled as a mean-preserving spread of the distribution of productivity shocks. The meanpreserving spread induces on-the-job search on a wider range of productivity values. As a result of increased on-the-job search, the variance of the transitory part of earnings increases among job changers. The direction of the change in the transitory variance across job stayers is ambiguous and depends on their composition between non-seekers and on-the-job seekers who did not find a new job
Product Demand Shifts and Wage Inequality
Full text linkThe UK and the US have experienced both rising skill premia and rising employment of skilled workers since the 1980s. These trends are typically interpreted as concurrent shifts of relative skill supplies and demands, and the demand shifts are attributed to skill-biased technological change or changes in international trade patterns. If more skilled workers demand more skill-intensive goods, then an exogenous increase in relative skill supplies will also induce a shift in relative demand. This channel reduces the need to rely on technology and trade to explain the patterns in the data. I illustrate this mechanism with a simple twosector general equilibrium model. The empirical part demonstrates that in the UK more educated and richer workers demand more skill-intensive goods. Calibration of the model suggests that this induced demand shift can explain 3% of the total relative demand shift in
the UK between 1981 and 1997. The baseline model only explains between-industry shifts in skill upgrading and wage inequality, while empirically, most of these changes took place within industries. An extension of the model with different qualities of goods and labor can also explain some of the within-industry changes
An economist perspective on employment protection legislation and labour market prospects
No full textRiformare l'apprendistato in Italia
No full textL'articolo esamina la disciplina dell'apprendistato in Italia, le differenze con il sistema tedesco di alternanza scuola-lavoro e le proposte di riforma avanzate in Italia per instaurare un sistema simile a quello tedesco. L'articolo analizza le inadeguatezze della disciplina del d. lgs. n. 167/2011, sia per quanto attiene la disciplina del recesso del contratto sia per la mancanza di un vero collegamento con i percorsi di istruzione scolastica e universitaria, come invece avviene con successo in Germania
Risk aversion and schooling decisions
No full textWe develop a non-rational expectation econometric model of sequential schooling decisions. Using unique Italian panel data in which individual differences in attitudes toward risk are measurable (with error), we investigate the effect of risk aversion on the probability of entering higher education. This allows us to characterize the subjective (as opposed to the objective) effect of higher education on marginal risk exposure. Because the measure of risk aversion (the classical Arrow-Pratt degree of absolute risk aversion) is posterior to schooling decisions, it depends on current wealth realizations and we must therefore take into account its endogeneity. We also allow risk aversion to be measured with error. After taking into account both the endogeneity of wealth and measurement error, we find that risk aversion is a key determinant (comparable to parents’ educational background) of the decisions to enter higher education. Precisely, risk aversion acts as a deterrent to higher education investmen
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