Migration under Asymmetric Information and Human Capital Formation

We study the migration of skilled workers, along with the skill acquisition incentives created by the prospect of migration. We trace out the dynamics of migration as foreign employers accumulate experience in deciphering the skill levels of individual migrants. It is found that migration by the relatively highly skilled is followed by return-migration from both tails of the migrant skill distribution; that the possibility of migration induces skill acquisition at home; that until the probability of discovery reaches its steady state equilibrium, migration consists of a sequence of moves characterized by a rising average skill level; and that migration of skilled workers can entail a home-country welfare gain.     

人力资本不平等与人力资本投资的生育率机制--基于面板数据联立方程模型的分析

人力资本不平等对人力资本投资有着重要的影响。分析了人力资本不平等通过生育率影响人力资本投资的机制。通过构建面板数据联立方程模型对我国省际数据的实证研究,发现人力资本不平等与人力资本投资之间存在很强的负相关。实证结果表明,当其他条件都相同时人力资本不平等程度越高的地区居民的生育率越高,而高生育率反过来阻碍人力资本投资,即生育率机制是显著的。     

Capital Flows, Vertical Multinationals, Wage Inequality, and Welfare

Wage inequality between skilled and unskilled labor in the US and its trading partners, Mexico and Chile, has increased since 1980, while Taiwan's wage inequality has decreased since the mid‐1980s. The authors provide a new explanation for the latter, involving a rise in capital flows from Taiwan to less‐developed countries (LDCs) in the form of vertical multinationals (MNEs), and a corresponding rise in intermediate‐good exports from the MNEs to subsidiaries in LDCs. Moreover, national income in both countries definitely improves.     

Minimum Wage Legislation, Investment and Human Capital

A two period, general equilibrium, model is analysed in which agents foresee how the second period outcome is determined by the investment decisions which they make in the first period. These decisions concern the acquisition of human and physical capital. The paper considers the impact of a minimum wage in the second period. It shows that, in equilibrium, this policy increases both types of investment. There is a range of values of the minimum wage at which the increases in investment are obtained without any reduction in period 2 employment. This is welfare-improving for a range of parameter values. Under very specific circumstances, the minimum wage achieves a Pareto efficient outcome.     

Mortality,Human Capital and Persistent Inequality

Available evidence suggests high intergenerational correlation of economic status and persistent disparities in health status between the rich and the poor. This paper proposes a mechanism linking the two. We introduce health capital into a two-period overlapping generations model. Private health investment improves the probability of surviving from the first period of life to the next and, along with education, enhances an individual’s labor productivity. Poorer parents are of poor health, unable to invest much in reducing mortality risk and improving their human capital. Consequently, they leave less for their progeny. Despite convex preferences and technologies, initial differences in economic and health status may perpetuate across generations when annuities markets are imperfect.Additional support was provided by the National Science Foundation. Additional support was provided by the National Science Foundation.     

Wage Inequality and Wage Mobility in Europe

Using data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, this paper investigates wage inequality and wage mobility in Europe. Decomposing inequality into within‐ and between‐group inequality, we analyze to what extent wage inequality and mobility can be explained by observable characteristics. Furthermore, we investigate which individual and household characteristics determine transitions within the wage distribution. We find that overall, mobility reduces wage inequality. While a large part of wage inequality is due to unobservable characteristics, the equalizing effect of mobility mainly occurs within groups. Furthermore, both personal and household characteristics play an important role for wage transitions. Finally, our findings reveal large cross‐country differences across Europe.     

人力资本不平等与全要素生产率增长关系

本文基于1990-2007年间我国29个省份数据,运用较为前沿的面板协整技术,实证检验了人力资本不平等与全要素生产率增长之间的长期稳定关系。研究表明:(1)近些年来,中国的教育扩张有效地促进了人力资本积累和人力资本不平等程度的改善;(2)人力资本不平等对全要素生产率增长具有显著的负向影响。因此,在强调人力资本积累、加大教育投入的同时,应关注教育资源分配的公平性,减少人力资本不平等,以促进全要素生产率的进一步增长。     

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。     

Foreign Competition and Wage Inequality

The author argues that increased foreign competition can affect technical choice and skill differentials even when actual imports do not rise significantly. A model is presented of general oligopolistic equilibrium (GOLE) in which a reduction in import barriers (whether technological or policy–imposed) encourages more strategic investment by incumbent firms. The predictions accord with many of the stylized facts: higher skill premia; higher ratios of skilled to unskilled workers employed in all sectors and throughout the economy; little change in import volumes or prices; and rapid technological progress with rather little change in total factor productivity.     

Occupational Mobility and Wage Inequality

In this article we argue that wage inequality and occupational mobility are intimately related. We are motivated by our empirical findings that human capital is occupation specific and that the fraction of workers switching occupations in the U.S. was as high as 16% a year in the early 1970's and had increased to 21% by the mid-1990's. We develop a general equilibrium model with occupation-specific human capital and heterogeneous experience levels within occupations. We find that the model, calibrated to match the level of occupational mobility in the 1970's, accounts quite well for the level of (within-group) wage inequality in that period. Next, we find that the model, calibrated to match the increase in occupational mobility, accounts for over 90% of the increase in wage inequality between the 1970's and the 1990's. The theory is also quantitatively consistent with the level and increase in the short-term variability of earnings.     

Income Inequality, Human Capital Accumulation and Economic Performance

We show that greater income equality implies higher human capital accumulation and economic performance in an overlapping-generations model with heterogeneity in income and talent. Given liquidity constraints and declining marginal utility, individuals with a given level of talent receive education if their initial income is higher than a threshold level and the threshold is lower for more talented individuals. Assuming the more talented create more human capital when educated, greater initial income equality for one generation then imply not only higher aggregate human capital accumulated by that generation but an improvement in all subsequent generations' initial income distributions.     

Human Capital, Growth, and Inequality in Russia

Our model captures the fact that Russia has both much human capital and an education system that produces the wrong skills for a market economy. We define a rule for the timing of educational restructuring that is Pareto optimal and that dominates all later times in a Paretian sense while simultaneously reducing inequality. We demonstrate that failure to implement restructuring early in the transition process is likely to produce a very long delay that will significantly reduce Russia's human capital. A retreat from subsidizing public education is likely to be counterproductive. We argue that early educational restructuring should be emphasized in Russia's transition strategy. J. Comp. Econom., December 1999, 27(4), pp. 618–643. Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, N.T., Hong Kong, People's Republic of China; University of Colorado, Denver, Denver, Colorado 88217; and Royal Holloway College, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 OEX, United Kingdom.     

Changes in Wages,Wage Inequality and the Return to Human Capital Skills in Kenya: 1977–2005

The conventional literature on wage inequality in Kenya has two drawbacks: first, by focusing on manufacturing sector wages, overlooking wages in other sectors, the results may be biased. Second, previous studies emphasize wage determination solely at the conditional mean rather than resort to wage determination across the entire earnings distribution. We remedy these weaknesses and add a new layer of research previously unexamined. Particularly, we consider wage changes during periods of wide GDP fluctuations from 1977 to 1986, 1986 to 1999, and 1999 to 2005 and explore if prices of measured human capital skills moved in tandem with changes in the dispersion of unmeasured human capital skills as is postulated by human capital theory. Our results support human capital theory: we find higher wages and higher residual wage dispersion during periods of rising GDP (1999–2005) but find lower wages and lower residual wage dispersion during periods of falling GDP (1977–86 and 1986–99).     

Trade,Wage Gaps,and Specific Human Capital Accumulation*

We develop a new framework for the analysis of the impact of trade liberalization on the wage structure and on welfare. Our model focuses on the decision of workers to accumulate firm‐specific skills, by “on‐the‐job” training, knowing that this means their future wages will have to be negotiated, and that the outcome of negotiation will depend on the profitability prospect of firms operating in a new trading environment. We show that trade liberalization may reduce the welfare of a developing country because of its adverse effect on skill accumulation. We also explore the effects of trade liberalization on the wage gap between skilled and unskilled workers.     

Gender Wage Inequality and Economic Recession

The Paper develops a two sector full employment general-equilibrium model for a small open developing economy, with both male and female labor. One sector produces low-skilled export commodity while other sector produces high skilled import competing commodity. The effects of world-wide economic recession on gender wage inequality have been examined in such an economy. The analysis concludes that low demand for high skilled commodity and/or low volume of foreign direct investment due to recession may aggravate the average gender wage inequality in the economy.

     

General Purpose Technology and Wage Inequality

The recent changes in the US wage structure are often linked to the new wave of capital-embodied information technologies. The existing literature has emphasized either the accelerated pace or the skill-bias of embodied technical progress as the driving force behind the rise in wage inequality. A key, neglected, aspect is the general purpose nature of the new information technologies. This paper formalizes the idea of generality of technology in two ways, one related to human capital (skill transferability) and one to physical capital (vintage compatibility) and studies the impact of an increase in these two dimensions of technological generality on equilibrium wage inequality.     

Human Capital, Study Effort, and Persistent Income Inequality

The paper shows that if an individual's cost of human capital accumulation depends on his parents' human capital and there exists a "raw labor" sector of production, individuals with low parental human capital may devote little effort in study and become unskilled workers. Further, if an individual exerts little effort in study, the human capital he accumulated may be even less than his parents'. Consequently, his children will have even lower parental human capital than him and they will therefore also become unskilled. Thus, the model shows that even when education is free, income inequality can persist across generations.     

Human Capital Formation and the Decision Makers

Recent empirical work has identified the existence of cultural filters — demographically non-neutral processes whereby employers differentially screen applicants to evaluative attributes and characteristics - and analyzed how they affect differential employment success rates and wage levels. Women are filtered differently than men, and the outcome is disproportionately lower levels of employment and wages. The analysis explores the proposition that, for women to obtain long-term employment at reasonable wages, alternative strategies for workforce participation should be developed at the regional level to better match needs of employers - and the way they filter applicants for those needs, through investment in the target population.     

Trade, Technology and UK Wage Inequality

This paper examines the impact of international trade and technical change on changes in the UK skill premium. We first measure trade as changes in product prices and technical change as TFP growth. Then we relate price and TFP changes to a set of underlying forces. Among our results are (a) changes in prices, not TFP, were the major force behind the rise in inequality in the 1980s; (b) changes in OECD prices and UK tariffs significantly raised 1980s skill premia through their effects on prices, and that industry concentration significantly raised 1980s skill premia through its effect on TFP.     

Trade and Labor Approaches to Wage Inequality

The paper compares the trade and labor approaches to wage inequality. It first looks at the theoretical differences, stressing the different roles ascribed to sector and factor bias, labor supply and the theory of technical change in trade models with endogenous prices. It then briefly reviews some of the evidence on the sector bias of prices and technology.