Equality of opportunity is a principle of justice that is built on two fundamental ideas. On the one hand, outcome differences across individuals are unacceptable if they are rooted in factors that are beyond individual control. Examples of such circumstance characteristics are the biological...

In this paper we show that wage inequality decreased in the Italian private sector, both in the upper and in the lower tail of the distribution, in the period 1993-2006. By applying a quantile decomposition procedure we find that the decrease of the 90/50 ratio is almost totally related to a...

In this paper, wage differentiation patterns for Turkey in terms of the couples who are working in the same industry and the ones who are working in different industries are investigated. In order to do this, the Turkish Household Labor Force Surveys from 2004 to 2014 are utilized. In the...

Wage inequality in Portugal increased over the last quarter of century. The period from 1982 to 1995 witnessed strong increases in both upper- and lower-tail inequality. A shortage of skills combined with skill-biased technological changes are at the core of this evolution. Since 1995,...

This paper studies a model of the distribution of income under bounded needs. Utility derived from any given good reaches a bliss point at a finite consumption level of that good. On the other hand, introducing new varieties always increases utility. It is assumed that each variety is owned by a...

Wage inequality in Portugal has increased over the last thirty years, with two distinct periods. The period from 1984 to the mid-90s witnessed strong increases in both upper- and lower-tail inequality. A shortage of skills combined with skill-biased technological changes were at the core of this...

This paper contributes to the debate on the effects of trade versus technological change on wage differentials. We propose an explanation of the stylized facts which is based on interactions between openness and technological change because of labor market institutions and government...

In this article we estimate the long-run aggregate elasticity of substitution between skilled and unskilled workers. This is an important parameter as it allows us to compute the skill biased technological progress (SBTP) from the evolution of relative wages. However, it is hard to estimate...

The approach put forward in this article is based on Schumpeter's idea of creative destruction, the competitive process by which entrepreneurs are always looking for new ideas that will render their rivals' ideas obsolete. I present a model in which the rate of economic growth is sensitive to...

A growing literature is concerned with the effects of flexible workplace systems or High Performance Work Organizations (HPWOs) on wages. This paper makes use of a new employer-employee-linked panel data set for Germany to examine the effects of adopting HPWOs on wages as well as on the wage...