Wage inequality and skill asymmetries

Peter Skott and Paul Auerbach ()

No 2003-7, Economics Discussion Papers from School of Economics, Kingston University London

Abstract: Using a simple model with two levels of skill, we assume that high-skill workers who fail to get high-skill jobs may accept low-skill positions; low-skill workers so not have the analogous option of filling high-skill positions. This asymmetry implies that an adverse, skill-neutral shock to aggregate employment may cause an increase in wage inequality, both between and within skill categories, as well as an increase in unemployment, especially among low-skill workers. Movements in productivity, unemployment and inequality may thus be linked to induced over-education and credentialism.

Keywords: wage inequality; unemployment; skill bias; overeducation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 E25 J31 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2003-07-07
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/6701/1/Skott-P-6701.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Wage inequality and skill asymmetries (2004)
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:ris:kngedp:2003_007

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Discussion Papers from School of Economics, Kingston University London Kingston University London, School of Economics, Penrhyn Road, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, KT1 2EE, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Andrea Ingianni ().