How does employer power mediate the impact of labor saving technical change on inequality? This question has largely been neglected in the recent literature on the wage and distributional consequences of automation, where the labor market is assumed to be competitive. In a simple task-based...

I examine the incidence and determinants of the gender income gap in Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Serbia, Tajikistan, and Ukraine using recent household data based on an identical survey instrument across countries. Four main results are established, using a range of estimators, including...

We extend the Altonji and Card (1991) framework for analysing the impact of immigrants on natives' wages from two to three labour types and estimate reduced form wage equations for The Netherlands, United Kingdom and Norway. We find very small effects on natives' wages and no dominant robust...

The paper analyzes the effect of human-capital investments of heterogeneous individuals on the dynamics of the wage structure within a neoclassical growth model. The accumulation of physical capital changes relative factor prices and thus incentives to acquire skills, thereby altering the...

In a meritocratic society an individual's economic success is determined by their ability, not by their parents' socio-economic status. We assess whether meritocracy has increased in both the British education system and labour market. The richness of our longitudinal data enables us to look at...

We investigate the reliability of data from the Wage Indicator (WI), the largest online survey on earnings and working conditions. Comparing WI to nationally representative data sources for 17 countries reveals that participants of WI are not likely to have been representatively drawn from the...

Earnings nonresponse in household surveys is widespread, yet there is limited knowledge of how nonresponse biases earnings measures. We examine the consequences of nonresponse on earnings gaps and inequality using Current Population Survey individual records linked to administrative earnings...

In this paper we discuss some strands of the recent literature on the evolution of gender gaps and their driving forces. We will revisit key stylized facts about gender gaps in employment and wages in a few high-income countries. We then discuss and build on one gender-neutral force behind the...

Income inequality has been lower in periods when trade unionism has been strong. Using observations on wages by occupation, by geography, and by gender in collective bargaining contracts from the 1940s to the 1970s, patterns in movements of wage differentials are revealed. As wages increased,...

The question of who benefits from economic growth is usually assessed by using cross section data to calculate changes in income inequality. An alternative is to assess patterns of panel income changes. We derive theoretical conditions reconciling changes in inequality together with various...