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,...

Incentive provision is a central question in modern economic theory. During the run up to the financial crisis, many banks attempted to encourage loan underwriting by giving out incentive packages to loan officers. Using a unique data set on small business loan officer compensation from a major...

Brazil has made remarkable progress in reducing poverty and inequality. This reduction is explained by strong growth but also by effective social policies. Besides growth, public services and cash transfers have played the biggest role, the latter notably through the successful “Bolsa...

This paper provides an overview of the main findings of the book "Social Insurance and Labor Markets: How to Protect Workers While Creating New Jobs." The book conceptualizes and reviews the empirical evidence on the potential distortions that the social insurance system of a country can have on...

This paper estimates the extent of intergenerational income mobility in Japan among sons and daughters born between 1935 and 1975. Our estimates rely on a two-sample instrumental variables approach using representative data from the Japanese Social Stratification and Mobility (SSM) surveys,...

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 increasing wage inequality in many countries is usually seen as brought about by economic forces that drive for economic efficiency within a changing technological and social environment. Ethical evaluations of these developments diverge, yet the view that free labor markets drive to...

Der Artikel untersucht die Lohnstruktur westdeutscher Arbeitnehmer von 1984 bis 2007 auf Basis des Sozio-oeconomischen Panels (SEOP). Bis Mitte der Neunziger Jahre war die Lohnstruktur stabil, ab 1995 steigt die Lohnungleichheit an, allerdings nur in der unteren Hälfte der Einkommensverteilung....

By exploiting establishment-level data, this paper sheds new light on the sources of the changes in the structure of production, wages, and employment that have occurred over the last several decades. We investigate the following two related hypotheses. First, that most of the recent increase in...

Zentrale verteilungspolitische Indikatoren in Deutschland haben sich seit dem Jahr 2005 wieder normalisiert oder sogar strukturell verbessert. Dennoch bleiben mindestens drei zentrale Herausforderungen: Erstens gelingt es nicht, die Langzeitarbeitslo-sigkeit stärker als bereits geschehen...