The role of market access and human capital in regional wage disparities: Empirical evidence for Ecuador

Rafael Alvarado () and Atienza Miguel ()
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Atienza Miguel: Departamento de Economía, Universidad Católica del Norte, Chile

No 50, Documentos de Trabajo en Economia y Ciencia Regional from Universidad Catolica del Norte, Chile, Department of Economics

Abstract: This article examines the effect of market access and human capital on regional wage disparities in Ecuador using the wage equation of the core-periphery model of the New Economic Geography and a multi-level model. Our results, based on cross sectional data, suggest that market access has a positive and statistically significant effect on wages, although this effect is relatively small. Only a small degree of regional wage variation can be attributed to the effect of market size, while the composition of the labor force explains a significant part of the reduction of regional wage disparities. Consequently, efforts to reduce the unequal spatial distribution of human capital can contribute to the reduction of regional income disparity

Keywords: Market access; human capita; wages; NEG; multilevel regression; Ecuador (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J31 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2014-03, Revised 2014-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-hrm, nep-lab and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cat:dtecon:dt201404

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