Computer adoption and returns in transition

Across nine transition economies, it is the young, educated, English‐speaking workers with the best access to local telecommunications infrastructures who work with computers. These workers earn about 25 percent more than do workers of comparable observable skills who do not use computers. Controlling for likely simultaneity between computer use at work and labour market earnings makes the apparent returns to computer use disappear. These results are corroborated using Russian longitudinal data on earnings and computer use on the job. High costs of computer use in transition economies suppress wages that firms can pay to their workers who use computers.     

Occupational Status: Why do some Workers Miss Out?

The difference in socioeconomic status between the 'haves' and 'have-nots' is widening in the Australian labour market. This is reflected in the data on both earnings and occupational status. This paper assesses the factors contributing to differences in the occupational attainment of workers with a marginal attachment to the labour market and workers who are part of mainstream Australia. Overall, 94 per cent of the occupational status differential is attributable to the inferior endowments possessed by workers with a marginal attachment to the labour market. Until the disadvantaged workers improve their skills they will not be able to gain access to high status occupations.     

Increasing dispersion of skills and rising earnings inequality

In recent decades many countries have simultaneously liberalized their trading regimes and expanded their education systems. The theoretical effect of these regime shifts on the wage differential between skilled and unskilled workers is ambiguous. On the one hand, openness to trade causes demand shifts in the labor market which may widen or narrow the differential. This result depends on whether the unskilled wage is depressed, as in the case of importing countries, or raised, as in the case of exporting countries. On the other hand, an increased supply of more educated workers reduces their wages and narrows the skill wage gap. In this study of the labor market of Hong Kong, we document that recent changes in response to the trade liberalization of Mainland China and expanded access to education have increased the earnings differential between skilled and unskilled workers. Using detailed census data, we argue that the main reason for this outcome is the widened dispersion of skills across the earnings distribution, resulting from demand and supply shifts in the labor market caused by trade openness and expanded access to higher education.     

Native-immigrant wage differentials in Greece: discrimination and assimilation

This article applies the Blinder–Oaxaca methodology in order to dissect the average earnings differentials between Greek workers and three different groups of immigrants into a part attributed to differences in characteristics and a part due to discrimination. It also seeks to identify the effect of assimilation (i.e. postmigration human capital) on immigrants’ earnings. We use information about 8429 individuals, of which 1185 are immigrants. The data are drawn from the Greek Labour Force Survey (2009). Our results suggest that discrimination is significantly higher for immigrants originating from non-EU countries than it is for EU foreigners, while it is negative for those who terminated education in Greece. Also, there is evidence that (i) post-migration human capital is a significant determinant of immigrants earnings, (ii) there is limited transferability of skills between sending countries and Greece and (iii) education is the main determinant of the wage gap between natives and immigrants.     

Earnings Inequality in Australia: Changes, Causes and Consequences

This article reviews research on recent developments in earnings inequality in Australia. Four main issues are addressed. First, what are the main changes in earnings inequality which have occurred? Second, what do we know about the causes of changes in earnings inequality? Third, how have earnings differentials between workers in different skills groups changed, and to what extent can those changes be explained by shifts in the relative demand for labour and relative supply of labour by level of skill? Fourth, how have changes in earnings inequality affected the distribution of income?     

Central Government versus private sector wages and cognitive skills: evidence using endogenous switching regression

The importance of estimation techniques that allow for nonrandom selection of workers into the public and private sectors has been established in the theoretical and empirical literature. A separate body of work has explored the contribution of cognitive and other basic skills to earnings. This article brings together these two strands of empirical literature using Adult Literacy and Lifeskills (ALL) survey data for Norway and Bermuda. In the case of Norway, results from both Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and a switching regression model agree that cognitive skills are rewarded more in the public sector and that, in both sectors, the main effect is the direct effect of skills on earnings. In the case of Bermuda, however, switching regression estimates are substantially different with respect to the how skills affect earnings; furthermore, controlling for cognitive skills changes the nature of selection and, hence, the estimates of sector wage differentials.     

国家职业资格证书、工人技能水平和收入效应——来自5家制造型企业21个生产车间的经验证据

推行国家职业资格证书是我国劳动就业政策的重要内容,也是广大劳动者非学历职业教育的主要方式,对加强技能人才培养、促进劳动力市场建设等方面具有重要意义。本文利用5家制造型企业21个生产车间的调查数据,对国家职业资格证书与工人的技能水平和年收入之间的关系进行了研究。研究发现,获得国家职业资格证书的工人在技能水平上显著高于无证工人,证书等级越高,技能水平越高。与无证工人相比,初级工和中级工证书的收入效应约为9.5%,高级工证书的收入效应为11.0%,技师及以上等级证书的收入效应显著上升至24.0%。进一步的分析揭示,初级工、中级工和高级工证书的收入效应主要是因为工人技能水平提高带来的;技师以上等级证书的收入效应一方面来源于工人技能水平的提高,另一方面则是由一些非技能因素造成的。     

Returns to skills around the world: Evidence from PIAAC

Existing estimates of the labor-market returns to human capital give a distorted picture of the role of skills across different economies. International comparisons of earnings analyses rely almost exclusively on school attainment measures of human capital, and evidence incorporating direct measures of cognitive skills is mostly restricted to early-career workers in the United States. Analysis of the new PIAAC survey of adult skills over the full lifecycle in 23 countries shows that the focus on early-career earnings leads to underestimating the lifetime returns to skills by about one quarter. On average, a one-standard-deviation increase in numeracy skills is associated with an 18 percent wage increase among prime-age workers. But this masks considerable heterogeneity across countries. Eight countries, including all Nordic countries, have returns between 12 and 15 percent, while six are above 21 percent with the largest return being 28 percent in the United States. Estimates are remarkably robust to different earnings and skill measures, additional controls, and various subgroups. Instrumental-variable models that use skill variation stemming from school attainment, parental education, or compulsory-schooling laws provide even higher estimates. Intriguingly, returns to skills are systematically lower in countries with higher union density, stricter employment protection, and larger public-sector shares.     

Progressive Taxation and Wage Setting: Some Evidence for Denmark

The proposition that a progressive tax system contributes to wage moderation is studied using Danish earnings data disaggregated by occupation, gender and earnings level. Our main conclusions are that income-tax progression affects wage setting, but whether it moderates or exaggerates wage pressure is income dependent. An increase in progressivity reduces the pre-tax earnings of middle-income workers (manual male workers and moderate income earners among both male and female non-manual workers). The reverse is found for high-income earners (non-manual male workers), in that an increase in progressivity tends to raise pre-tax earnings. Finally, there is no significant effect of tax progressivity on the wages of low-income earners.
JEL classification : H 3; J 3; J 5; J 6     

The Impact of Computer Use On Earnings in the UK

The effect of new technology on relative demands for workers has been the subject of much research in economics. Krueger (1993) and others have studied the impact of computers on earnings in the US and elsewhere. Such studies have been criticised for ignoring the possibility of bias due to unobserved heterogeneity between computer users and non‐users, resulting in computer users not being a random sub‐sample of all workers. As well as looking at the effects of computers on earnings in the UK, this paper extends previous analyses by using a sample selection framework to deal with the bias problem. Results indicate not only that returns to computer use are positive but that it is important to correct for the sample selection bias.     

Sources of earnings inequality: Estimates from an on-the-job search model of the US labor market

Since the early 1980s the labor market in the United States has seen a substantial increase in earnings dispersion. We study the issue by developing an on-the-job search model of the US labor market that allows for wage and employment mobility as a result of optimal individual behavior. We estimate its structural parameters on PSID data at different points in time to clarify the sources of the evolution of earnings inequality and instability between 1987 and 1996. This procedure allows to: compute lifetime measure of inequality on top of the usual cross-sectional measure of inequality and provide counterfactual experiments that evaluate the contribution of different parameters to changes over time by taking into account some equilibrium effects. We find that the increase in lifetime inequality and in cross-sectional inequality have been generated by different sources and that these sources are different by skills: changes in the wage offer distribution are the main determinant of the increase in inequality for skilled workers while both mobility changes and wage offer distribution changes are needed to explain changes for the unskilled.     

Computers,skills and wages

Computer technology is most prominently used by skilled, high-wage workers. This suggests that computer use requires skills to take full advantage of the possibilities, which are particularly present among relatively skilled workers. This article develops a simple technology adoption model showing that the decision to adopt computer technology depends on (i) the tasks to be performed, (ii) the level of skill or education and (iii) the level of wages. Applying this model to British data, it is shown that the effect of wages and particular tasks on computer adoption is larger than the effect of skills on adoption. The estimates suggest that in Britain computer use is likely to be a matter of cost efficiency and not so much of workers’ skills.     

Why the earnings of the middle class declined: evidence from Japan

Using rich governmental micro data, we explore the reasons for the decline in earnings of the middle class in Japan. Many developed countries have seen the decrease in middle-class earnings, and Japan, long known for its solid middle class, is no exception. Our analyses revealed that the main reasons for the decline differ between males and females. The decrease in the earnings of middle-class male workers is due to the decrease in general human capital captured by returns to potential experience years. In contrast, the decrease in the earnings of middle-class female workers is mainly due to the increase in the supply of part-time workers. Furthermore, the firm-specific human capital captured by the return to tenure has increased only among high-wage male workers. This implies that Japanese firms invest in a selected few able workers, regardless of age, because they have been changing human resource strategy in response to economic globalization and changes in technology and the management environment.     

Income maximization and the selection and sorting of international migrants

Two prominent features of international labor movements are that the more educated are more likely to emigrate (positive selection) and more educated migrants are more likely to settle in destination countries with high rewards to skill (positive sorting). Using data on emigrant stocks by schooling level and source country in OECD destinations, we find that a simple model of income maximization can account for both phenomena. Results on selection show that migrants for a source-destination pair are more educated relative to non-migrants the larger is the absolute skill-related difference in earnings between the destination country and the source. Results on sorting indicate that the relative stock of more educated migrants in a destination is increasing in the absolute earnings difference between high and low-skilled workers. We use our framework to compare alternative specifications of international migration, estimate the magnitude of migration costs by source-destination pair, and assess the contribution of wage differences to how migrants sort themselves across destination countries.     

LONG‐RUN INEQUALITY AND SHORT‐RUN INSTABILITY OF MEN'S AND WOMEN'S EARNINGS IN CANADA

This paper examines the variability of workers’ earnings in Canada over the period 1982–2006. We decompose the total variance of workers’ earnings into a ‘permanent’ component between workers and a ‘transitory’ earnings instability component over time for given workers. We then investigate the statistical relationships between these components and indicators for the business cycle. The most marked change in earnings variances in Canada since 1982 is the general rise in total earnings variance, which is essentially driven by a quite dramatic rise in long‐run earnings inequality. The patterns across age categories of the two variance components are almost opposite. Long‐run earnings inequality generally rises with age, but earnings instability is seen to generally decline with age, so that earnings instability is markedly highest among entry age workers. Unemployment rate effects are positive on almost all variance measures, while higher unemployment is associated with widened long‐run earnings differentials and greater short‐run earnings instability.     

Gender Earnings Differential in Urban China

This study uses survey data collected from five large cities in China to describe and decompose the earnings difference between female and male workers. The results indicate that the main source of lower earnings for females lies in unequal pay within sectors, and that the earnings gap due to differences in sectoral attainment is relatively small. The results also reveal that most of the gender earnings differential is attributable to sex discrimination rather than to the gender difference in the endowment of human capital. Therefore, eliminating discrimination against females within individual sectors is effective in narrowing the gender earnings gap.     

中国上市公司盈余管理的频率与幅度

盈余管理频率和幅度是投资者保护程度在现实经济中的具体体现。然而,已有文献在盈余管理频率或者幅度方面所提供的证据还远远不足以揭示客观事实。本文运用所有研究样本的报告盈余信息,通过假设报告盈余服从混合正态分布,运用参数估计的方法对阈值处的盈余管理频率和幅度进行推断。研究结论表明,中国上市公司从1995年至2003年间都存在为避免报告亏损而进行的盈余管理。1996年、1997年以及2001年至2003年的盈余管理频率和幅度较高,并且2001年至2003年逐年呈上升趋势。2001年至2003年平均有64·4%的亏损公司在阈值0点上进行盈余管理并达到避免报告亏损的目的,平均盈余管理幅度为提高ROA数据0·065。研究还发现2001年至2003年期间的盈余管理更加具有隐蔽性。     

The probability of return migration,migrants' work effort,and migrants' performance

"This paper demonstrates that differences in earnings between migrants and the native population may reflect differences in incentives rather than differences in characteristics. The analysis indicates that in the presence of a positive probability of return migration, migrants' work effort is higher than that of comparable native-born workers. This differential may explain why, even if all workers are perfectly homogeneous in skills, migrants often outperform the native-born workers in the receiving economy."     

MEASURING EARNINGS INEQUALITY: AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF THE BONFERRONI INDEX

This paper studies the economic content of the Bonferroni index. The most remarkable property of the Bonferroni index is that it overweights income transfers among the poor, and the weights are higher the lower the transfers occur on the income distribution. Hence, it is a good measure of inequality when changes in the living standards of the poor are concerned. There are many problems—especially in labor economics—that fall into this category. Using a version of the assignment model, we show that the Bonferroni index can be formulated endogenously within a mechanism featuring efficient assignment of workers to firms. This formulation is useful in evaluating the interactions between the distribution of skills and earnings inequality with a special emphasis on the lower tail of the earnings distribution. Moreover, it allows us to think about earnings inequality by separately analyzing the contribution of each economic parameter.     

Establishment Level Earnings,Technology And The Growth Of Inequality: Evidence From Britain

It is often argued that technical change is responsible for the increase in wage inequality in Britain and the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. In this paper we examine this argument using data from individuals and establishments. It is found that the presence of micro-electronic technologies in workplaces is associated with higher earnings, especially for skilled workers. Decompositions suggest that technical change could have been a cause of the increase in skills premium for highly skilled workers. Nevertheless, our view is that the correlation between wages and plant-level technology is mainly driven by the effect of high wages on the propensity to introduce new technologies rather than vice versa. This view is supported by simultaneous models of the wage-technology relationship.