Public Sector Employment and the Skill Premium: Sweden versus the United States 1970–2012

David Domeij and Lars Ljungqvist

Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 2019, vol. 121, issue 1, 3-31

Abstract: Swedish census data and tax records reveal an astonishing decline in the aggregate skill premium of 30 percent between 1970 and 1990, with only a modest recovery in the next couple of decades. In contrast, the US skill premium rose by around 24 percent over those four decades. A theory that equalizes wages with marginal products can rationalize these disparate outcomes when we replace commonly used measures of total labor supplies by private sector employment. The dramatic decline in the skill premium in Sweden is the result of an expanding public sector that has disproportionately hired unskilled labor.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/sjoe.12284

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:bla:scandj:v:121:y:2019:i:1:p:3-31

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0347-0520

Access Statistics for this article

Scandinavian Journal of Economics is currently edited by Richard Friberg, Matti Liski and Kjetil Storesletten

More articles in Scandinavian Journal of Economics from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().