, individual wage risk has also increased. This paper proposes a mechanism through which a rise in wage risk increases the skill … premium. Intuitively, a rise in uninsured wage risk increases precautionary savings, thereby boosting capital accumulation … that the rise in wage risk observed between 1967 and 2010 increases the skill premium significantly. This finding is robust …

We estimate the changes in US male labor market risk over the last three decades in a model of endogenous labor supply … a life-cycle model with search frictions, we show that the estimated changes in risk can account for 85 percent of the … increase in within group wage inequality. The welfare costs of rising risk are small …