An obvious answer to this question is the capital-skill complementarity hypothesis originally proposed by Zwi Griliches (1969). But the relatively poor performance of this hypothesis suggests that other explanations are needed. Here we consider the labour union behaviour in the wage bargaining...

The objective of the paper is to answer an often-asked question : if tariff rates are reduced, what will happen to wage inequality ? We consider two types of wage inequality : between occupations (skills premium), and between industries. We use two large data bases of wage inequality that have...

The objective of the paper is to answer an often-asked question : if tariff rates are reduced, what will happen to wage inequality ? We consider two types of wage inequality : between occupations (skills premium), and between industries. We use two large data bases of wage inequality that have...

The objective of this work is to analyse the income inequality in the 15 EU countries during the convergence process to the Monetary Union. Using the information contained in the European Community Household Panel, corresponding to the four first waves. Using the inverse second order stochastic...

The median voter hypothesis has been central to an extensive literature on consequences of income distribution. For example, it has been proposed that greater inequality is associated with lower growth, because of the greater redistribution that is sought by the median voter when income...

With all the talk in Europe about “Islam” and “Muslim culture” it is surprising how little hard-core empirical evidence exists on the compatibility of “Muslim culture” with positive patterns of political, social, and ecological development in the world system in the 1980s, 1990s, and...

This paper investigates several factors that may be important for improving Mâori outcomes, and the extent to which their importance varies by iwi. Specifically, it examines the extent to which controlling for differences in characteristics of the European population and the populations of...

We study the evolution of the distribution of assets in a discrete time, de-terministic growth model with log-utility, a minimum consumption require-ment, Cobb-Douglas technology, and agents differing in initial assets. We prove that the coefficient of variation in assets across agents decreases...

It has been noted that failure to meet the target set by government for reducing the head count ratio of child poverty in Britain is partly due to the success of government policy in generating economic growth. Apart from missing the argument that absolute poverty is not a meaningful idea, this...