 Cross-Country Inequality TrendsNo 296, LIS Working papers from LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg Abstract: The economics profession has made considerable progress in understanding the increase in wage inequality in the U.S. and the UK over the past several decades, but currently lacks a consensus on why inequality did not increase, or increased much less, in (continental) Europe over the same time period. I review the two most popular explanations for these differential trends: that relative supply of skills increased faster in Europe, and that European labor market institutions prevented inequality from increasing. I argue that these two explanations go some way towards accounting for the differential cross-country inequality trends, but do not provide an entirely satisfactory explanation. In addition, it appears that relative demand for skills increased differentially across countries. Motivated by this reasoning, I develop a simple theory where labor market institutions creating wage compression in Europe also encourage more investment in technologies increasing the productivity of less-skilled workers, thus implying less skill-biased technical change in Europe than in the U.S. Pages: 45 pages Published in Economic Journal 113, (2003): 121-149. Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lis:liswps:296 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in LIS Working papers from LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg Contact information at EDIRC. |
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