Task specialization and the native-foreign wage gap: Evidence from worker-level data

Eduard Storm

No 928, Ruhr Economic Papers from RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen

Abstract: Running RIF regressions to decompose wage differences along the distribution, this is the first study documenting that worker-level variation in tasks has played a key role in the widening of the German Native-Foreign Wage Gap. Comparing variation in Individual- vs Occupation-level task measures suggests idiosyncratic differences account for up to 34% of the explained wage gap. Importantly, natives specialize in high-paying interactive activities not only between but also within occupations. In contrast, foreign workers specialize in low-paying manual activities. This enhanced degree of task specialization accounts for 11% of the gap near the top of the distribution and 25% near the bottom, thus offering new insight into sources for imperfect substitution of native and foreign workers in the production function and consequently small migration-induced wage effects.

Keywords: Wage Gap; individual job task data; RIF decomposition; task specialization within occupations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J21 J24 J31 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:rwirep:928

DOI: 10.4419/96973086

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