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...

We analyze the differential impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the Spanish labor market across population groups, as well as its implications for income inequality. The main finding is that young, less educated, and low skilled workers, as well as women are the most affected by the COVID-19 shock...

This paper addresses two questions. First, under what circumstances will a centralized wage-bargaining system offer higher output and employment than a decentralized system? Second, what is the relationship between the degree of wage centralization and inflation? The paper argues that...

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...

Government wage, benefit, and employment decisions are not taken on a profit-maximizing basis and have a substantial impact on aggregate labor market performance and unemployment. In a two-sector labor market model with free mobility of labor, an increase in government wages or benefits reduces...

This paper summarizes statistics on the key aspects of the distribution of earnings levels and earnings changes using administrative (social security) data from Italy between 1985 and 2016. During the time covered by our data, earnings inequality and earnings volatility increased, while earnings...

Lagging labor reallocations outside agriculture amid sustained low agricultural productivity have been a key feature in the Philippines over the past 15 years. An analysis of the labor adjustments in and out of agriculture shows that a variety of factors have influenced this process. We find...

We examine the extent to which declining manufacturing employment may have contributed to increasing inequality in advanced economies. This contribution is typically small, except in the United States. We explore two possible explanations: the high initial manufacturing wage premium and the high...

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...