The great divergence(s)

Giuseppe Berlingieri, Patrick Blanchenay and Chiara Criscuolo

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper provides new evidence on the increasing dispersion in wages and productivity using a unique micro-aggregated firm-level data source, representative for the full population of firms in 12 countries. First, we document an increase in wage and productivity dispersions, for both manufacturing and market services, and show that the increase is mainly driven by the bottom of the wage and productivity distributions. Second, we show that between-firm wage dispersion increased more in sectors that experienced an increase in productivity dispersion; the estimated elasticity is larger at the bottom than at the top of the wage/productivity distributions, consistent with a framework in which more productive firms charge higher mark-ups and/or larger wage mark-downs. Third, we find that both globalisation and digitalisation strengthen the link between productivity and wage dispersion. Our results suggest that policies designed to mitigate wage inequality must take into consideration gaps between firms of the same sectors, and how both globalisation and digitalisation affect these gaps.

Keywords: digitalisation; dispersion; globalisation; productivity; wages (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 14 pages
Date: 2024-04-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-eff, nep-sbm and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Research Policy, 1, April, 2024, 53(3). ISSN: 0048-7333

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/122046/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The great divergence(s) (2024)
Working Paper: The great divergence(s) (2017)
Working Paper: The great divergence(s) (2017)
Working Paper: The great divergence(s) (2017)
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:ehl:lserod:122046

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().