We analyze the dramatic decline of the employment share of unskilled labor in the West German economy, in particular its relation to the relatively rigid earnings structure. We find that the substitution elasticity between unskilled and skilled labor is rather low in most sectors of the economy....

The nature of the relationship between employers and employees has been changing over the last three decades, with firms increasingly relying on contractors, temp agencies, and franchises rather than hiring employees directly. We investigate the impact of this transformation on the wage...

In a simulation-based study with data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), we analyze the effects of the newly introduced statutory minimum wage of 8.50 Euro per working hour in Germany on the gender wage gap. In our first scenario where we abstain from employment effects, the pay...

How valuable are cognitive and social abilities for entrepreneurs’ incomes as compared to employees? We answer three questions: (1) To what extent does a composite measure of ability affect an entrepreneur's earnings relative to employees? (2) Do different cognitive abilities (e.g. math...

This paper utilizes the self-employed to analyze the observed increase in the educational earnings premium in the 1980's. The paper compares the predictions of the signaling and human capital models in response to an exogenous demand shock such as a skill-biased technological change. Since the...

The occupational structure of an establishment provides a description of its production process by detailing the distribution and relative intensity of tasks performed. In this paper, I investigate whether there are substantive differences in the occupational structures of low- and high-wage...

This paper documents the changing structure of wages in India over the post-reform era, the roughly two-decade period since 1993. To investigate the factors underlying these changes, a supply-demand framework is applied at the level of the Indian state. While real wages have risen across India...

Using a large and unexpected public wage increase in Hungary which changed the public wage premium in 2002 from -17 to +7.5 percent from one month to the next, I study wage spillovers from the public to the corporate sector. I proxy the exposure of corporate workers to the public sector with the...

This paper investigates the male wage inequality and its evolution over the 1994-2002 period in Turkey by estimating Mincerian wage equations using OLS and quantile regression techniques. Male wage inequality is high in Turkey. While it declined at the lower end of the wage distribution it...

We examine the impact of changes in local labor market concentration on two components of income inequality in Mexico: local wage shares and labor income inequality. Combining data from the Economic Census and the Population and Housing Censuses, we analyze the mechanisms that drive the...