This paper shows how difficult it is to study the roles of discrimination and unobserved skills when studying changes in racial and gender wage gaps over time by examining merits and shortcomings of a popular decomposition method by Juhn, Murphy and Pierce (1991). The JMP method shows that wage...

We propose a measure of the industrial gender wage gap which is free from an identification problem by using inter-industry wage differentials, or industrial wage premia. We draw on a recent literature showing that a normalized regression equation can be used to resolve the identification...

Using normalized regression equations, we propose an alternative estimator of industrial gender wage gaps which is identified in the sense that it is invariant to the choice of an unobserved non-discriminatory wage structure, and to the choice of the reference groups of any categorical...

Women who want to work often face many more hurdles than men. This is true in Tajikistan where there is a large gender gap in labour force participation. We highlight the role of two factors – international migration and education – on the labour force participation decision and its gender...

This paper links data on establishments and individuals to analyze the role of establishments in the increase in inequality that has become a central topic in economic analysis and policy debate. It decomposes changes in the variance of log earnings among individuals into the part due to changes...

The minimum wage has been regarded as an important element of public policy for reducing poverty and inequality. Increasing the minimum wage is supposed to raise earnings for millions of low-wage workers and therefore lower earnings inequality. However, there is no consensus in the existing...

Korea is known not only for rapid economic growth but also relatively low wage inequality. It is one of the few countries in which wage inequality decreased during the 1980s, though in recent years wage inequality has increased. This paper studies what factors contributed to the changes in wage...