Workers in less secure jobs are often paid less than identical-looking workers in more secure jobs. We show that this lack of compensating differentials for unemployment risk can arise in equilibrium when all workers are identical and firms differ only in job security (i.e. the probability that...

The paper develops an equilibrium search and matching model where two-person families as well as singles participate in the labor market. We show that equilibrium entails wage dispersion among equally productive risk-averse workers. Marital status as well as spousal labor market status matter...

Using PSID microdata over the 1980-2010, we provide new empirical evidence on the extent of and trends in the gender wage gap, which declined considerably over this period. By 2010, conventional human capital variables taken together explained little of the gender wage gap, while gender...

This paper studies the impact of exam luck on individuals' education and labor market success. We leverage unique features of the Norwegian education system that produce random variation in the content of the exams taken by students at the end of high school. Lucky students take exams in...

Despite the increased attachment of women to the labour force in nearly all developed countries, a stubborn gender pay gap remains. This chapter provides a review of the economics literature on the gender wage gap, with an emphasis on developed countries. We begin with an overview of the trends...

In this paper, we study the development and underlying drivers of skill premiums in Germany between 1980 and 2008. We show that the significant increase in the medium to low skill wage premiums since the late 1980s was almost exclusively concentrated among the group of workers aged 30 or below....

This paper formulates a structural empirical model of heterogeneous firms whose workers exhibit fair-wage preferences, leading to a link between a firm's operating profits and wages of workers employed by this firm. We estimate the parameters of the model in a data-set of five European...

This paper explores the meaning and implications of the desire by workers for impact. We find that this impact motive can make firms in a competitive labor market act as monopsonists, lead workers with the same characteristics but at different firms to earn different wages, may alleviate the...

Although measures of sensitivity to inequality are important in judging the welfare effects of health-care programmes, it is far from straightforward how to elicit them and apply them in health-care decision making. This paper provides an overview of the literature on the measurement of...

In this paper, we study how high school students reacted to the shocking news of a school shooting. The shooting coincided with national high-school matriculation exams. As there were exams both before and after the shooting, we can use a difference-in-differences analysis to uncover how the...