The Evolution of Inequality in Productivity and Wages

The Evolution of Inequality in Productivity and Wages PDF Author: Giulia Faggio
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Industrial productivity
Languages : en
Pages : 80

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Book Description
There has been a remarkable increase in wage inequality in the US, UK and many other countries over the past three decades. A significant part of this appears to be within observable groups (such as age-gender-skill cells). A generally untested implication of many theories rationalizing the growth of within-group inequality is that firm-level productivity dispersion should also have increased. The relevant data for the US is problematic, so we utilize a UK panel dataset covering the manufacturing and non-manufacturing sectors since the early 1980s. We find evidence that productivity inequality has increased. Existing studies have underestimated this increased dispersion because they use data from the manufacturing sector which has been in rapid decline. Most of the increase in individual wage inequality has occurred because of an increase in inequality between firms (and within industries). Increased productivity dispersion appears to be linked with new technologies as suggested by models such as Caselli (1999) and is not primarily due to an increase in transitory shocks, greater sorting or entry/exit dynamics.

The Evolution of Inequality in Productivity and Wages

The Evolution of Inequality in Productivity and Wages PDF Author: Giulia Faggio
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Industrial productivity
Languages : en
Pages : 80

Get Book Here

Book Description
There has been a remarkable increase in wage inequality in the US, UK and many other countries over the past three decades. A significant part of this appears to be within observable groups (such as age-gender-skill cells). A generally untested implication of many theories rationalizing the growth of within-group inequality is that firm-level productivity dispersion should also have increased. The relevant data for the US is problematic, so we utilize a UK panel dataset covering the manufacturing and non-manufacturing sectors since the early 1980s. We find evidence that productivity inequality has increased. Existing studies have underestimated this increased dispersion because they use data from the manufacturing sector which has been in rapid decline. Most of the increase in individual wage inequality has occurred because of an increase in inequality between firms (and within industries). Increased productivity dispersion appears to be linked with new technologies as suggested by models such as Caselli (1999) and is not primarily due to an increase in transitory shocks, greater sorting or entry/exit dynamics.

Education, Skills, and Technical Change

Education, Skills, and Technical Change PDF Author: Charles R. Hulten
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022656794X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 528

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Book Description
Over the past few decades, US business and industry have been transformed by the advances and redundancies produced by the knowledge economy. The workplace has changed, and much of the work differs from that performed by previous generations. Can human capital accumulation in the United States keep pace with the evolving demands placed on it, and how can the workforce of tomorrow acquire the skills and competencies that are most in demand? Education, Skills, and Technical Change explores various facets of these questions and provides an overview of educational attainment in the United States and the channels through which labor force skills and education affect GDP growth. Contributors to this volume focus on a range of educational and training institutions and bring new data to bear on how we understand the role of college and vocational education and the size and nature of the skills gap. This work links a range of research areas—such as growth accounting, skill development, higher education, and immigration—and also examines how well students are being prepared for the current and future world of work.

Inequality and Industrial Change

Inequality and Industrial Change PDF Author: James K. Galbraith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521009935
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
The world knows that there is a global crisis of inequality in pay. But what caused it? Where is it more and where less severe? What can be done? This book deploys new techniques and a new global data set to advance striking answers to these questions, answers that have eluded even the largest international research institutions such as the OECD and the World Bank. Chapters trace the U.S. wage structure back to 1920, the relationship of inequality and unemployment in Europe, and the relationships of inequality to economic growth, liberalization, financial crisis, state violence and industrial policy in more than fifty developing countries.

The Race between Education and Technology

The Race between Education and Technology PDF Author: Claudia Goldin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674037731
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
This book provides a careful historical analysis of the co-evolution of educational attainment and the wage structure in the United States through the twentieth century. The authors propose that the twentieth century was not only the American Century but also the Human Capital Century. That is, the American educational system is what made America the richest nation in the world. Its educational system had always been less elite than that of most European nations. By 1900 the U.S. had begun to educate its masses at the secondary level, not just in the primary schools that had remarkable success in the nineteenth century. The book argues that technological change, education, and inequality have been involved in a kind of race. During the first eight decades of the twentieth century, the increase of educated workers was higher than the demand for them. This had the effect of boosting income for most people and lowering inequality. However, the reverse has been true since about 1980. This educational slowdown was accompanied by rising inequality. The authors discuss the complex reasons for this, and what might be done to ameliorate it.

Understanding the Evolution of the U.S. Wage Distribution

Understanding the Evolution of the U.S. Wage Distribution PDF Author: Fatih Guvenen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Human capital
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Book Description
In this paper we present an analytically tractable overlapping generations model of human capital accumulation, and study its implications for the evolution of the U.S. wage distribution from 1970 to 2000. The key feature of the model, and the only source of heterogeneity, is that individuals differ in their ability to accumulate human capital. Therefore, wage inequality results only from differences in human capital accumulation. We examine the response of this model to skill-biased technical change (SBTC) theoretically. We show that in response to SBTC, the model generates behavior consistent with several features of the U.S. data including (i) a rise in overall wage inequality both in the short run and long run, (ii) an initial fall in the education premium followed by a strong recovery, leading to a higher premium in the long run, (iii) the fact that most of this fall and rise takes place among younger workers, (iv) a rise in within-group inequality, (v) stagnation in median wage growth (and a slowdown in aggregate labor productivity), and (vi) a rise in consumption inequality that is much smaller than the rise in wage inequality. These results suggest that the heterogeneity in the ability to accumulate human capital is an important feature for understanding the effects of SBTC, and interpreting the transformation that the U.S. economy has gone through since the 1970's.

The Contribution of the Minimum Wage to U.S. Wage Inequality Over Three Decades

The Contribution of the Minimum Wage to U.S. Wage Inequality Over Three Decades PDF Author: David H. Autor
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 143798018X
Category : Income distribution
Languages : en
Pages : 67

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Book Description
We reassess the effect of state and federal minimum wages on U.S. earnings inequality using two additional decades of data and far greater variation in minimum wages than was available to earlier studies. We argue that prior literature suffers from two sources of bias and propose an IV strategy to address both. We find that the minimum wage reduces inequality in the lower tail of the wage distribution (the 50/10 wage ratio), but the impacts are typically less than half as large as those reported elsewhere and are almost negligible for males. Nevertheless, the estimated effects extend to wage percentiles where the minimum is nominally non-binding, implying spillovers. However, we show that spillovers and measurement error (absent spillovers) have similar implications for the effect of the minimum on the shape of the lower tail of the measured wage distribution. With available precision, we cannot reject the hypothesis that estimated spillovers to non-binding percentiles are due to reporting artifacts. Accepting this null, the implied effect of the minimum wage on the actual wage distribution is smaller than the effect of the minimum wage on the measured wage distribution.

Wage Inequality in Latin America

Wage Inequality in Latin America PDF Author: Julián Messina
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464810400
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
What caused the decline in wage inequality of the 2000s in Latin America? Looking to the future, will the current economic slowdown be regressive? Wage Inequality in Latin America: Understanding the Past to Prepare for the Future addresses these two questions by reviewing relevant literature and providing new evidence on what we know from the conceptual, empirical, and policy perspectives. The answer to the fi rst question can be broken down into several parts, although the bottom line is that the changes in wage inequality resulted from a combination of three forces: (a) education expansion and its eff ect on falling returns to skill (the supply-side story); (b) shifts in aggregate domestic demand; and (c) exchange rate appreciation from the commodity boom and the associated shift to the nontradable sector that changed interfi rm wage diff erences. Other forces had a non-negligible but secondary role in some countries, while they were not present in others. These include the rapid increase of the minimum wage and a rapid trend toward formalization of employment, which played a supporting role but only during the boom. Understanding the forces behind recent trends also helps to shed light on the second question. The analysis in this volume suggests that the economic slowdown is putting the brakes on the reduction of inequality in Latin America and will likely continue to do so—but it might not actually reverse the region’s movement toward less wage inequality.

Wage Growth, Productivity Growth, and the Evolution of Employment

Wage Growth, Productivity Growth, and the Evolution of Employment PDF Author: Martin F. Hellwig
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Employment (Economic theory)
Languages : en
Pages : 56

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Book Description


Rich Get Richer, The: American Wage, Wealth And Income Inequality

Rich Get Richer, The: American Wage, Wealth And Income Inequality PDF Author: Thomas Hyclak
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9811277311
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Inequality of wages among workers and inequality of income and wealth among families and households has been rising steadily for the past half-century in the United States and other developed economies. However, the United States stands out for having the most unequal wage and income distributions to begin with and for experiencing the fastest rise in inequality over the following decades. While this has been a long-developing situation and the subject of academic interest for some time, it is only in the last decade or so that inequality has attracted considerable public attention and become a political issue. Inequality has also become a subject of renewed interest among economists, with a growing number of scholars engaged in the development of new databases and the analysis of the causes and effects of increased inequality.This book provides an overview of the economic analysis of wage, income and wealth inequality in the United States, with a focus on this recent research. It provides the reader with an understanding of the complex causes of rising inequality, the serious consequences that make rising inequality an issue for public policy, and the potential policy actions that might be taken to slow or reverse rising inequality. The author presents an economic and statistical analysis in clear non-technical language to allow the general reader or student in an undergraduate course to learn the insights that economists have gained into the issue of inequality in advanced economies.The book contends that rising wage inequality among workers and income and wealth inequality among families reflects the complex interaction of profound changes in the US economy over the last half-century. These are not limited to economic changes like new technology, increased globalization, changes in the internal structure of firms, and the rise of new growth sectors in tech, finance, and health care. Of additional critical importance are changes in public opinion and political platforms and policies that replaced the New Deal view of the economic role of government with a pro-business, free-market philosophy that has changed labor market policy in a direction promoting increased inequality. This major change in the environment raises important questions about the efficacy of policy proposals. An additionally intriguing issue is the ultimate impact of the financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic on perceptions of and support for government policies designed to reverse the seemingly inexorable trend toward greater inequality. This book traces the evolution of inequality over time through key concept illustrations and language that is easy enough to understand, even for the general reader.

American Inequality

American Inequality PDF Author: Jeffrey G. Williamson
Publisher: New York ; Toronto : Academic Press
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
Monograph presenting a macroeconomic analysis of the relationship of economic development to wealth and income distribution inequality trends in the USA from the historical 1770s to the 1970s - rejects the notion that inequality was a necessary precondition of economic growth, and argues that complex interactions among such variables as technological change, labour supply and capital formation were sources of economic disparity. Bibliography pp. 335 to 349 and graphs.