Wage Dispersion, Over-Qualification, and Reder Competition

Ekkehart Schlicht ()

Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal, 2007, vol. 1, issue 13, pages 1-31

Abstract: The expansion of higher education in the Western countries has been accompanied by a marked widening of wage differentials and increasing over-qualification. While the increase in wage differentials has been attributed to skill-biased technological change that made advanced skills scarce, this explanation does not fit well with the observed increase in over-qualification which suggests that advanced skills are in excess supply. By ?Reder-competition? I refer to the simultaneous adjustment of wage offers and hiring standards in response to changing labor market conditions. I present a simple model of Reder competition that depicts wages as driven by labor heterogeneity, rather than scarcity. The mechanism may give rise to a simultaneous increase in wage differentials and over-qualification. --

Keywords: Hiring standards; employment criteria; selection wages; efficiency wages; mobility; skillbiased technological change; heterogeneity-biased technological change; over-qualification; over-education; wage dispersion; Reder competition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D43 J63 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
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Related works:
Working Paper: Wage Dispersion and Overqualification as Entailed by Reder Competition (2007)
Working Paper: Wage Dispersion and Overqualification as Entailed by Reder Competition (2007)
Journal Article: Wage Dispersion, Over-Qualification, and Reder Competition (2007)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:ifweej:6636

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