"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...

"This study examines the impact of Poland's trade liberalization 1994-2001 on the industry wage structure. The liberalization was undertaken in preparation for Poland's accession to the European Union and was more pronounced in industries with larger shares of unskilled labor. Our analysis...

Since the early 1980s, the U.S. economy has experienced a growing wage differential: high-skilled workers have claimed an increasing share of available income, while low-skilled workers have seen an absolute decline in real wages. How and why this disparity has arisen is a matter of ongoing...

This paper studies the optimal wage structure of a firm with imperfect monitoring of worker effort. We find that when firms can commit to (implicit) long-term contracts, imperfect monitoring leads to optimal wage profiles that reflect worker seniority. We provide a precise measure of seniority...

We revisit the estimation of industry wage differentials using linked employer-employee data from the U.S. LEHD program. Building on recent advances in the measurement of employer wage premiums, we define the industry wage effect as the employment-weighted average workplace premium in that...

We use restricted-access, geocoded data on the near-universe of workers in 23 U.S. states in order to quantify the impact of wind energy development on local earnings and employment, by race, ethnicity, sex, and educational attainment. We find the largest relative impacts for workers without a...

This paper connects changes in employer characteristics through job transitions to employee earnings following mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Using firm balance sheet data linked to individual earnings data in Canada and a matched difference-in-differences design, we find that after M&As...

We document systematic differences in wage and earnings inequality between and within occupations and show that these differences are intimately related to systematic differences in labor supply across occupations. We then develop a variant of a Roy model in which earnings are a non-linear...