EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Wage Compression in Europe: First Evidence from the Structure of Earnings Survey 2002

Gilles Mourre

No 09-051.RS, Working Papers CEB from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles

Abstract: This paper aims at examining wage compression in Europe, defined as a relatively small wage differentials compared with productivity differences. Using the publicly available data on wages drawn from the Structure of Earnings Survey 2002, it considers the existence of wage compression both across occupations and levels of education by means of cross-sectional econometric analysis. Looking at wage compression across occupations, robust evidence gives some support to the conventional view that there is a compressed wage distribution in Europe. While the estimated wage compression is even higher across the levels of education, the evidence appears much less robust. Wage compression seems to be higher in the euro area and the EU15 than in the twelve New Member States, which is in line with their more flexible wage bargaining setting. Likewise, wage compression with the EU15 mainly occurs in continental and southern countries. Moreover, the compression of wages is not uniform across wage levels and more pronounced at the lower end of the earning distribution.

Keywords: Wage structure; wage differentials by skills; demand for labour; European Union. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J23 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 p.
Date: 2009
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published by:

Downloads: (external link)
https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/5434 ... ol_wpaper_09-051.pdf RePEc_sol_wpaper_09-051 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sol:wpaper:09-051

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://hdl.handle.ne ... ulb.ac.be:2013/54344

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers CEB from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Benoit Pauwels ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-20
Handle: RePEc:sol:wpaper:09-051