Relative Wage Inequality Research Articles

Skill Formation, Public Expenditure on Education and Wage Inequality: Theory and Evidence

As per the conventional wisdom there should be provision for public assistance for skills acquirement for improving relative wage inequality in the future. Empirical observations on some prominent small OECD countries, however, indicate that the relationship between wage inequality and public spending on education is not necessarily unambiguous. A theoretical underpinning of this empirical observation has been provided in this study in terms of a $$2\times 3$$ general equilibrium model for a small open economy. Later, the correctness of the theoretical framework and its result have been empirically examined with the help of an unbalanced panel dataset of 13 small developed countries from 2000 to 2011. This empirical analysis supports the main theoretical result that the relationship between wage inequality and public expenditure could indeed be ambiguous. This finding questions the desirability of providing subsidy on education at least from the perspective of reduction in earnings inequality among the different sections of the working population.

Input Trade Liberalisation and Wage-Inequality with Non-Traded Goods

This paper develops a multi-sector full-employment general equilibrium model with internationally non-traded goods and international fragmentation in skill-intensive production, to understand the mechanism how trade-induced growth in the skill-intensive sector is mediated to informal sector wages and employment through the existence of finished non-tradable and the corresponding domestic demand-supply forces. The underlying developing economy is characterised by dual unskilled labour market with unionised formal and non-unionised informal sectors, consistent with the empirical literature on developing economies India. Numerical analysis has also been performed to simulate how the changes in elasticities of factor substitution in production in different sectors account for the movement in informal wage and therefore the movement in skilled–unskilled wage gap. This paper challenges the view that the relative wage-inequality in a DC like India with rigid organised sector labour market has unequivocally been governed only by the increase in the skilled wages. An extension with involuntary unemployment of skilled labour using the fair wage hypothesis has also been presented that effectively demonstrates the robustness of the results obtained under full-employment model.

The Implications of Temporary Jobs on the Distribution of Wages in Italy: An Unconditional IVQTE Approach

AbstractUsing Italian data, this paper investigates the wage implications of temporary jobs across the whole pay profile using unconditional quantile regression (UQR) models. Results clearly indicate that the wage penalty associated to temporary jobs is significantly larger at the bottom of wage profile and is almost absent for high‐wage jobs. This is in line with the sticky floors hypothesis, supporting the idea that the wage gap for temporary employees depends on their position in the wage distribution for low‐paid jobs. To recover a causal interpretation, I employ an instrumental variable (IV) strategy. I adopt the unconditional instrumental variable quantile treatment effects (IVQTE) estimator proposed by Frolich and Melly, which corrects for endogenous selection in temporary contracts. The IVQTE estimates yield similar results to standard UQR, even if the wage penalty is larger in size at the bottom of the wage distribution and disappears at the top quantiles. This evidence highlights that policies aimed at increasing flexibility may reinforce the two‐tier nature of the Italian labour market and the relative wage inequality.

Fair Wage Hypothesis, Foreign Capital Inflow and Skilled-Unskilled Wage Inequality in the Presence of Agricultural Dualism

The paper develops a four-sector general equilibrium model where the fair wage hypothesis is valid and there is agricultural dualism for analyzing the consequence of an inflow of foreign capital on the skilled-unskilled wage inequality and the unemployment of skilled labour in a developing economy. The unskilled workers are fully employed but there is imperfection in the market for unskilled labour. On the contrary, the skilled wage is set by the firms by minimizing the unit cost of skilled labour and their efficiency depends on the relative income distribution and the unemployment rate. The analysis finds that an inflow of foreign capital worsens the relative wage inequality but lowers the unemployment of skilled labour. It provides an alternative theoretical foundation to the empirical finding that inflows of foreign capital might have produced unfavourable effect on the wage inequality in the developing countries during the liberalized regime by increasing the relative demand for skilled labour.

Foreign Capital and Skilled-Unskilled Wage Inequality in a Developing Economy with Non-Traded Goods

The existing theoretical literature does not take into consideration the existence of non-traded goods and the nature of capital mobility between the traded and the non-traded sectors in analyzing the consequences of liberalized investment policies on the relative wage inequality in the developing countries. The present paper purports to fill in this gap using two four-sector general equilibrium models reasonable for a developing economy. We have found that inflows of foreign capital usually improve the wage inequality when the low-skill sector is capital-intensive. But, the relative wage gap may widen if the high-skill sector is capital-intensive. When the non-traded sector produces a non-traded final commodity wage inequality worsens if the low-skill sector is capital-intensive and employs only a very small proportion of the unskilled workforce and if the primary export sector is unskilled labour-intensive. Appropriate policy recommendations for improving the wage inequality have also been made.

International migration of labour and skilled–unskilled wage inequality in a developing economy

The paper develops a three sector general equilibrium structure with diverse trade pattern and imperfection in the unskilled labour market to analyze the consequences of international mobility of skilled and unskilled labour on the skilled–unskilled wage inequality in the developing economies. It shows that the effects of international migration of labour on the wage inequity crucially depend on both the relative capital intensities between the low-skill and high-skill sectors and the institutional nature of the markets for unskilled labour. The analysis finds that an emigration (immigration) of either type of labour is likely to produce a favourable (an unfavourable) effect on the wage inequality. In particular, the result of emigration (immigration) of skilled labour on the relative wage inequality is counterintuitive. These results have important policy implications for an overpopulated developing country like India.

International Migration of Labour and Skilled-Unskilled Wage Inequality

The present note develops a three sector general equilibrium structure with diverse trade pattern and imperfection in the unskilled labour market to analyze the consequences of international mobility of skilled and unskilled labour on the skilled-unskilled wage inequality in the developing economies. The analysis finds that an emigration (immigration) of either type of labour is likely to produce a favourable (an unfavourable) effect on the wage inequality. In particular, the result of emigration (immigration) of skilled labour on the relative wage inequality is counterintuitive. These results have important policy implications for an overpopulated developing country like India.