Education and wage inequality before and during the fiscal crisis: A quantile regression analysis for Greece 2006–2016
Michael Chletsos and
Stelios Roupakias
Review of Development Economics, 2020, vol. 24, issue 4, 1333-1364
Abstract:
The Greek labor market has undergone dramatic changes during the past 10 years. Wage inequality, especially at the bottom end of the earnings distribution, increased sharply. Simultaneously, and despite a massive emigration wave of mainly highly educated employees, the ratio of skilled to unskilled labor has further increased. In this paper, we analyze the relationship between education and the dispersion of male earnings, using Labor Force Survey data, for the years 2006 and 2016. We address both unobserved heterogeneity and potential endogeneity by using an instrumental variables estimator, designed for quantile regression modeling. Our best estimates suggest that the returns to education are higher at lower quantiles in the pre‐crisis period, while the opposite holds true in the post‐crisis period. It is shown that within‐group inequality, mainly among university graduates, has played a major role in these developments. Interestingly, our findings appear to be, in part, driven by changing returns to education across quantiles in the public sector. Increased demand for skilled workers, heterogeneous returns to education across different fields of study, and “ability” are proposed as potential underlying mechanisms.
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)
Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/rode.12695
Related works:
Working Paper: Education and wage inequality before and during the fiscal crisis: A quantile regression analysis for Greece 2006-2016 (2018) 
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:bla:rdevec:v:24:y:2020:i:4:p:1333-1364
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1363-6669
Access Statistics for this article
Review of Development Economics is currently edited by E. Kwan Choi
More articles in Review of Development Economics from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().