Despite evidence that skilled labor is increasingly concentrated in cities, whether regional wage inequality is predominantly due to differences in skill levels or returns is unknown. We compare Appalachia, with its wide mix of urban and rural areas, to other parts of the U.S., and find that...

Occupational segregation and pay gaps by gender remain large while many of the constraints traditionally believed to be responsible for these gaps have weakened over time. Here, we explore the possibility that women and men have different tastes for the content of the work they do. We run...

This paper summarizes evidence for the existence of a wage curve - a downward-sloping relationship between the level of pay and the local unemployment rate - in modern micro data. At the time of writing, the curve has been found in 40 nations. Its elasticity is approximately -0.1

We consider the extent to which societal shifts have been responsible for an increased tendency for females to sort into traditional male roles over time, versus childhood factors. Drawing on three cohort studies, which follow individuals born in the UK in 1958, 1970 and 2000, we compare the...

This paper considers the impact of education and training on both individual and co-worker pay and establishment performance using the matched employer-employee data in WERS 2004, the panel dataset 1998-2004 and the new Financial Performance Questionnaire. This enables us to assess the impact of...

We use the method of Dominitz and Manski (1996) to solicit anticipated wage distributions for continuing to a Master degree or going to work after completing the Bachelor degree. The means of the distributions have an effect on intention to continue as predicted by theory. The dispersions in...

We survey the literature on the Risk Augmented Mincer equation that seeks to estimate the compensation for uncertainty in the future wage to be earned after completing an education. There is wide empirical support for the predicted positive effect of wage variance and the negative effect of wage...