The paper explains how a country can fall into a quot;low-skill, bad-job trap,quot; in which workers acquire insufficient training and firms provide insufficient skilled vacancies. In particular, the paper argues that in countries where a large proportion of the workforce is unskilled, firms...

We evaluate empirically the impact of the dramatic 1991 trade liberalization in India on the industry wage structure. The empirical strategy uses variation in industry wage premiums and trade policy across industries and over time. In contrast to earlier studies on developing countries, we find...

Nominal wage growth in most advanced economies remains markedly lower than it was before the Great Recession of 2008-09. This paper finds that the bulk of the wage slowdown is accounted for by labor market slack, inflation expectations, and trend productivity growth. In particular, there appears...

Brazil's public-sector wage bill is comparatively high. It grows inertially and competeswith other spending. Rightsizing the wage bill could stimulate administrative efficiencyand bring more equity into a system where public employees earn more than private incomparable professions. Most...

Since the global financial crisis, US wage growth has been sluggish. Drawing on individual earnings data from the 2000-15 Current Population Survey, I find that the drawn-out cyclical labor market repair - likely owing to low entry wages of new workers - slowed down real wage growth. There are,...

The paper uses a large survey (GSOEP) to analyze the labor market performance of immigrants in Germany. It finds that new immigrant workers earn on average 20 percent less than native workers with otherwise identical characteristics. The gap is smaller for immigrants from advanced countries,...

Labor markets in Australia have adjusted smoothly to significant declines in commodity priceswith little increase in unemployment. This paper examines several aspects of the adjustment,focusing on (i) evidence of increased labor market frictions following the commodity pricedecline; (ii)...

Standard New Keynesian (NK) models feature an optimal inflation target well below two percent, limited welfare losses from business cycle fluctuations and long-term monetary neutrality. We develop a NK framework with labour market frictions, endogenous productivity and downward wage rigidity...

We show that gender inequality decreases the variety of goods countries produce and export, in particular in low-income and developing countries. We argue that this happens through at least two channels: first, gender gaps in opportunity, such as lower educational enrollment rates for girls than...

This paper considers the adjustment of physical capital within a country in the long run and in the short run. It uses a unique data set on income, labor, human capital, and private and public physical capital in the Spanish regions over the past two decades. In the long run, the movement of...