This Paper describes the changes in the composition of the labour force in the last 35 years and quantifies the substitution of low education / high experience workers by low experience / high education workers by using US and French microdata. The consequences of this substitution on the wage...

This Paper presents strong evidence for the concavity of wages in job and worker characteristics by adding second order terms to a Mincerian earnings function for six OECD countries. Under a standard normality assumption, this concavity cannot be attributed to unobserved components in those...

This paper shows that we can normalize job and worker characteristics such that without frictions there exists a linear relationship between wages on the one hand and worker and job type indices on the other. However, for five European countries and the US we find strong evidence for a...

We present a model in which workers have to be educated to get employed and firms have to innovate in order to increase productivity. Education as well as innovation and production require skilled labour as inputs. This and the fact that learning opportunities differ across workers determine...

This paper develops a growth model in which the endogenous evolution of technological progress and wage inequality is consistent with the observed pattern in the United States and several European economies in the last two centuries. The model accounts for: a) the rise in wage inequality between...

We use two UK panel data sets to investigate skill-upgrading in the United Kingdom and how it has been affected by computerization. Census data reveals that most aggregate skill-upgrading is explained by within-firm rises in skill composition. Such upgrading is significantly related to...

This paper offers an alternative theory for the increase in unemployment and wage inequality experienced in the United States over the past two decades. In my model firms decide the composition of jobs and then match with skilled and unskilled workers. The demand for skills is endogenous and an...

This paper surveys the use of search and matching models in macroeconomics. It outlines the standard model, discusses its extensions, presents alternative formulations, considers the empirical evidence, and studies applications to macroeconomic questions such as business cycles, growth, and...

We study the effect of 'globalization' on wage inequality. Our 'global' economy resembles Rosen's (1981) 'Superstars' economy, where a) innovations in production and communication technologies enable suppliers to reach a larger mass of consumers and to improve the (perceived) quality of their...

We compare the trade and labour approaches to wage inequality. We first look at the theoretical differences, stressing the different roles ascribed to sector and factor bias, labour supply and the theory of technical change in trade models with endogenous prices. We then briefly review some of...