This paper offers an explanation for the substantial decline in income inequality in Latin America during the 2000s, which is known to have been mainly driven by a decline in the skill premium. The 2000s were characterized by an economic expansion concentrated on low-skill-intensive service...

This paper addresses the importance of compositional changes in the labor force for the development of the wage distribution. Demographic change and higher educational attainment imply a shift toward employees with more experience and/or better education. These groups are characterized by higher...

We analyze the effects of automation on the wages of high-skilled and low- skilled workers and thereby on the evolution of wage inequality. Our model explains the simultaneous presence of i) increasing per capita GDP, ii) de-clining real wages of low-skilled workers, and iii) an increasing...

We analyze the effects of automation on the wages of high-skilled and low-skilled workers and thereby on the evolution of wage inequality. Our model explains the simultaneous presence of i) increasing per capita income, ii) declining real wages of low-skilled workers, and iii) an increasing...

Are labor markets in higher-income countries more meritocratic, in the sense that worker-job matching is based on skills rather than idiosyncratic attributes unrelated to productivity? If so, why? And what are the aggregate consequences? Using internationally comparable data on worker skills and...

This paper evaluates the impact of education on measured inequality across the wage distribution using pooled records from the 2005 and 2010 Cameroon labour force surveys, wage equations and standard inequality measures. Returns to education increased monotonically. Yet incremental returns were...

Wage inequality in Chile has remained high for decades and it is currently at the center of the political agenda. Increasing education of workers is expected to contribute to reduce wage inequality. Based on historical trends of age, education, and returns to education, this paper attempts to...

This study offers a unified explanation for the perplexing fact that the education premium rises more for low-experienced workers, while the experience premium increases mainly for low-educated labor. The interaction of signaling, employer learning and credit constraints resolves this puzzle....

This paper examines the relationship between the dispersion of general skills in the working population, and inequality in the distribution of labor income that arises from the market equilibrium from occupational choices. In general, more skilled individuals earn higher labor income in the...

Over the last three decades, wage inequality and the importance of the minimum wage presented an interesting negative correlation in Portugal. Using a semiparametric approach, counterfactual decomposition methods, and an extremely rich matched employer-employee dataset of all employees in the...