IDENTITY MANAGEMENT: WORKER INDEPENDENCE AND DISCRIMINATION AGAINST GAY MEN

I build on a growing literature documenting wage differentials for gay men by showing that the wage differential gay men experience varies significantly across occupations with different levels of worker independence. The penalty is smallest in management and professional occupations, which involve a high level of worker independence. It is largest in service occupations, which include a lower level of independence. This distribution of earnings penalties is consistent with discrimination being the source of the gay wage penalty. The results support the conjecture that higher levels of independence allow gay men to more successfully manage the disclosure of sexual orientation and mediate the negative effects of discrimination. (JEL J3, J7, J15)     

INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS OF INTER-INDUSTRY WAGE DIFFERENTIALS

We use OECD data to examine inter-industry wage differentials (relative wages among industries) for 14 OECD countries over the period 1970–85. We find, first, that the industrial wage structures have shown remarkable stability over time in terms of rank order for all the countries in the sample. Second, despite their rank order stability, wage structures show a tendency to expand or contract. While the U.S. has shown increasing industry wage dispersion between 1970 and 1985, the pattern is very mixed for other countries. Unionization is a significant factor in explaining cross-country differences. Third, industry wage rankings show some evidence of becoming increasingly similar across nations over time, and this movement is associated with a convergence of per capita incomes. Fourth, industry wage differentials are positively related to an industry's productivity growth, output growth, capital intensity, and export orientation.     

Variation in the labour market rewards to vocational qualifications in the UK

We use UK Labour Force Survey data to estimate wage differentials associated with the attainment of vocational qualifications, relative to comparison groups qualified to at best one level below. Our main aim is to show the variation in the size of such differentials, according to the unobserved characteristics of the individual, via quantile regression and also according to the characteristics of the qualifications themselves, in terms of the level, type and subject area. With respect to subject area, the key reason for variation in differentials across subjects is the differences in occupations to which qualifications lead.     

AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE RELATIONS AMONG WAGE DIFFERENTIALS, PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH, AND TRADE

This article investigates the relations among productivity growth, wage differentials, and net exports in the United States. The time periods considered are the long run and the short run. Cointegration test results indicate that all the test variables are cointegrated. Therefore, productivity growth, wage differentials, and trade are all related in the long run. A short-run investigation of the relations among productivity growth, wage differentials, and trade is conducted within a vector error correction (VEC) estimation structure. The VEC tests indicate that, contrary to the prevailing view, productivity growth and trade have no impact on wage differentials in the short run. At the same time, it is apparent that wage differentials and trade have a positive and statistically significant impact on productivity growth in the United States in the short run.     

WAGE MOBILITY AND WAGE INEQUALITY AMONG YOUNG WORKERS

This analysis uses data from the National Longitudinal Surveys to examine wage inequality and wage mobility within the wage distribution for young high school graduates during their early years in the labor market. The analysis constructs a new index that facilitates measuring mobility changes over time. The data indicate that no strong relationship exists between wage mobility and wage inequality for young workers. Controlling for time invariant differences between individuals also indicates that between the 1970s and 1980s factors that impact mobility underwent very few changes .     

FIXED‐WAGES,WAGE DIFFERENTIALS AND WORKER HETEROGENEITIES

We study incentive‐compatible labour contracts in the case where individual productivity, preference for leisure and time preference rate are unobservable by the principal in a two‐period model. We first reduce this three‐dimensional problem to a standard one‐dimensional screening problem. Features of second‐best labour contracts provide a rationale for both fixed‐wages and wage differentials.     

LABOUR MARKET SEGMENTATION: WAGE DIFFERENTIALS AND HYSTERESIS EFFECTS*

Competitive labour market analysis proposes that an individual's human capital endowment is the main mechanism for pay determination. This study develops a model to highlight hysteresis effects on either investment in physical capital for firms or investment in human capital for workers on wage differentials.     

WORKER INVESTMENTS IN SAFETY,WORKPLACE ACCIDENTS,AND COMPENSATING WAGE DIFFERENTIALS

The theory of compensating wage differentials (CWDs) assumes that firms supply and workers demand workplace safety, predicting a positive relationship between accident risk and wages. This article allows for safety provision by workers, which predicts a countervailing negative relationship between individual risk and wages: Firms pay higher wages for higher safety‐related productivity. Using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth panel data and data on fatal and nonfatal accidents, our precise CWDs imply a value of a statistical injury of $45.4 thousand and a value of a statistical life of $6.3 million. In line with our model, individual risk and wages are negatively correlated.     

Sexual orientation and labour relations: new evidence from Athens,Greece

We use data from the 2008–2009 Athens Area Study (AAS) to provide the first evidence on the relationship between men's sexual orientation and wages in the Greek capital, Athens. Gay and bisexual men are found to receive significantly lower monthly wages than heterosexual male workers after accounting for demographic and occupational characteristics. The estimations reveal that educated gay and bisexual workers face lower wage differentials than less-educated gay and bisexual workers, which is consistent with the statistical theory of discrimination. However, wage gaps are significant at all educational attainment levels, suggesting that these workers face strong prejudices in the Athenian labour market. The same pattern holds also across all occupations and sectors. Furthermore, to better understand the determinants of the wage gaps, we compare gay/bisexual men with both married and unmarried heterosexual men. By making these comparisons, we are able to disentangle the penalty associated with being unmarried from other human-capital explanations for the wage gap.     

A Village Economy: Land and People of Huecorio

This paper utilizes an original establishment survey in a select few low-wage industries in Los Angeles to draw conclusions about the existence of and explanations for intra-industry wage differentials. We explore differences in average establishment wages but also in the starting wage of the largest low-wage occupations in establishments. Well over 50 percent of the variation in average establishment wages occurs across establishments within industries and 60 percent or more of the starting occupational wages of establishments occurs both within industries and occupations. Differences in the skills of workers account for a portion of the variation in intra-industry average and intra-occupational starting wages, but so too do institutional factors such as unions, rent sharing, monitoring difficulty, and recruitment difficulty.     

R&D INVESTMENTS AND SEQUENTIAL WAGE NEGOTIATIONS*

This paper analyses how the structure of wage bargaining affects R&D investment by firms that increases the productivity of labour in a Cournot duopoly. We find that total expenditure on R&D is greater when wages are set simultaneously than when they are set sequentially. Thus sequential wage negotiations reduce the incentive for firms to innovate and affect the productivity of labour. When wage negotiations are sequential the productivity of labour is greater (lower) in the follower (leader) firm than when negotiations are simultaneous. We also obtain that for same parameter values it is possible for the firm with the lower productivity to end up paying a higher wage than the firm with the higher level of labour productivity.     

INCOME AND CONSUMPTION DISTRIBUTION TRENDS IN THE PHILIPPINES, 1950–70*

Unlike most developing countries, the Philippines has had several (four) reasonably comparable family income and expenditure surveys, covering a reasonable period of time (15 years). This study draws on those surveys and on wage data in an attempt to judge how, if at all, the distribution of income has been changing. The household survey data shows a declining share of both income and consumption for the top income groups; for the bottom quintile the share of recorded income fell while that of recorded consumption rose. When possible biases of the data are allowed for, it is hard to argue that either a narrowing or widening of income differentials occurred over these years. Real wages of a number of important occupations appear to have fallen, however. Only a partial reconciliation of the trends indicated by these wage series and the income trends for various occupational groups implicit in the household survey data was possible, indicating either data problems or the need for more subtle interpretations of the data. Since structural change in the labour force has been rapid (an increasing share being found in the high income occupations as time passed), declining wage rates for certain lower income groups cannot be taken to imply a general worsening of distribution. Our final conclusion is that distribution has probably changed little, and is about as likely to have changed one way as the other.     

Gender wage differentials and discrimination in Korea: comparison by knowledge intensity of industries

This study estimates the relative size of the non-productivity-related gender wage gap across industries with differing knowledge intensities. More specifically, a gender wage premium was estimated from a modified Mincerian earnings equation, and an Oaxaca's discrimination coefficient was computed. Empirical evidence indicates that gender wage differentials tend to be less subject to potential discrimination in knowledge-based industries than in other industries with lower knowledge intensity. The estimated discrimination effect is least noticeable in top hierarchical occupations such as professionals and technicians, while it is most sizeable in production workers and sales/service workers, regardless of industrial affiliation.     

MINIMUM WAGE HIKES AND THE WAGE GROWTH OF LOW‐WAGE WORKERS

This paper presents difference‐in‐differences estimates of the impact of the British minimum wage on the wage growth of low‐wage employees. Estimates of the probability of low‐wage employees receiving positive wage growth have been significantly increased by the minimum wage upratings or hikes. However, whether the actual wage growth of these workers has been significantly raised or not depends crucially on the magnitude of the minimum wage hike considered. Findings are consistent with employers complying with the legally binding minimum wage but holding down or offsetting the wage growth that they might have awarded in periods of relatively low minimum wage hikes.     

"Holding hands at midnight": The paradox of caring labor

Abstract

The gender wage gap in the United States narrowed considerably throughout the 1980s and then more slowly in the 1990s. Using a decomposition methodology and US Current Population Survey data, this study investigates the impact of deindustrialization's continuing shift in employment away from manufacturing to services on the US gender wage gap between 1990 and 2001. The study finds that the widening of the gender wage gap in the service sector caused a slowdown in the narrowing of the US gender wage gap. Within the service sector, two occupational elements affected the growing gender wage gap: women's entry into traditionally male occupations characterized by high wages and high gender wage differentials that resulted in the relative increase in men's wages compared to women's wages in these occupations.     

STABLE SETS AND STEADY WAGES

This paper uses the notion of the Stable Set, in conjunction with a mild restriction on the extent to which a firm can quickly replace its entire workforce, to explain equal treatment across workers within a firm yet wage differentials across firms, and why a firm responds with quantity rather than with wage adjustments to shocks.     

A comparative analysis of inter-industry wage differentials: industrialized versus developing countries

This study aims to compare the available evidence on inter-industry wage structure for industrialized and developing countries and to find whether the industry wage differentials are consistent and stable independent of time and space. Moreover, it tries to clarify some of the determinants of industry wage differentials. International evidence supports the wage differential regularity across countries, and the factors underlying inter-industry wage differentials are found to be more or less the same for both industrialized and developing countries.     

ENDOGENOUS HUMAN CAPITAL INVESTMENT AND THE INTERACTION OF FRONTIER AND ADOPTIVE KNOWLEDGE ON GROWTH AND WAGE INEQUALITY

A three-sector, overlapping-generations growth model endogenizes the opportunity cost of human capital formation and the relative skill requirements of invention, innovation, and adoption of general-purpose technologies. As a result, the relative wage of skilled workers is a function of the endogenous ratio of total-to-adoptive knowledge (where the difference in knowledge stocks is frontier knowledge). Comparative statics are examined for the model's seven parameters. Simulations (representing a transition with phases to a more complex level of economic development) are presented for simultaneous exogenous shocks capable of matching (i) observed inverse movements of the relative wage and the detrended relative supply in the USA, (ii) the sharp slowing and recovering US multifactor productivity growth data since the 1970s, and (iii) a reconciliation of data used to support or deny skill-biased technological change as a major force driving up the relative wage since 1980.     

Are low-skill public sector workers really overpaid? A quasi-differenced panel data analysis

Public–private sectoral wage differentials have been studied extensively using quantile regression techniques. These typically find large public sector premiums at the bottom of the wage distribution. This may imply that low skill workers are ‘overpaid’, prompting concerns over efficiency. We note several other potential explanations for this result and explicitly test whether the premium varies with skill, using Australian data. We use a quasi-differenced Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) panel data model which has not been previously applied to this topic, internationally. Unlike other available methods, this technique identifies sectoral differences in returns to unobserved skill. It also facilitates a decomposition of the wage gap into components explained by differences in returns to all (observed and unobserved) skills and by differences in their stock. We find no evidence to suggest that the premium varies with skill. One interpretation is that the compressed wage profile of the public sector induces the best workers (on unobserved skills) to join the public sector in low wage occupations, vice versa in high wage occupations. We also estimate the average public sector premium to be 6% for women and statistically insignificant (4%) for men.     

国有部门与非国有部门工资差异及人力资本贡献

本文利用微观调查数据,对我国国有部门与非国有部门的工资差异进行了实证研究。在对工资差异进行分解后,本文发现,我国国有部门的工资优势中有80%以上来自于人力资本的优势,这说明人力资本在国有部门的工资决定中已经发挥了决定性作用。但人力资本对工资差异的贡献在工资分布区间并不均匀,它随着工资从高分位点到低分位点逐渐降低,与此对应的是工资溢价随工资从高分位点到低分位点逐渐升高。从工资差异看,在工资分布的高端——高知识高技能人才的密集区,工资差异完全体现为人力资本的差异,而在工资分布的低端——低技能劳动力的密集区,工资差异有很大一部分是人力资本无法解释的,也即溢价。本研究认为,造成这种现象的原因在于国有部门"共享式"的工资决定模式。这种模式倾向于在压低高技能劳动力的报酬率的同时,抬高低技能劳动力的报酬率。所以国有部门的工资决定应进一步强化人力资本的报酬机制,以提高效率,增强竞争力。