This paper uses a life-cycle framework to document new stylized facts about the nexus between job polarization and earnings inequality. Using quarterly labor force data for the UK over the period 2000-2018, we find clear life-cycle profiles in the probability of being employed within each...

We study the economic effects of information technology (IT) adoption during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data on IT adoption covering almost three million establishments in the US, we find that technology adoption can partly shield the economy from the impact of the pandemic. In areas where...

This paper presents a simple framework that illustrates the link between skill-based wage differentiation and human capital acquisition given skill-biased technical progress. The analysis points to the economic costs resulting from labor market and income redistribution policies that prevent the...

Disaggregated data from 30 two-digit manufacturing industries in the east and west parts of unified Germany are used to estimate employment for three skill categories of blue collar workers. Employment elasticities are uniformly higher in the east, and for unskilled labor. The former result...

This paper draws on existing empirical literature and an original theoretical model to argue that globalization and skill supply affect the extent to which technology adoption in developing countries favors skilled workers. Developing countries are experiencing technical change that is...

Labor markets in the UK have been characterized by markedly widening wage inequality for lowskill (non-college) women, a trend that predates the pandemic. We examine the contribution of job polarization to this trend by estimating age, period, and cohort effects for the likelihood of employment...

Would countercyclical fiscal policy during recessions improve or worsen the gender employment gap? We give an answer to this question by exploring the state-dependent impact of fiscal spending shocks on employment by gender in the G-7 countries. Using the local projection method, we find that,...

German wages have not increased very rapidly in the last decade despite strong employment growth and a 5 percentage point decline in the unemployment rate. Our analysis shows that a large part of the decline in unemployment was structural. Micro-founded Phillips curves fit the German data rather...

This paper documents that inequality in labor earnings increased substantially during the economic transition in Poland. One surprising result is that earnings inequality increased markedly in both the private and public sectors, indicating that even state-owned enterprises in Poland moved...

This paper provides evidence that cross-sectional wage inequality in the U.K. rose sharply in the 1980s, continued to rise moderately through the mid-1990s and has remained essentially unchanged since then. As in the U.S., increases in within-group inequality account for a substantial fraction...