Wage Inequality and Unemployment with Overeducation

Wage inequality and overeducation in a model with efficiency wages

This paper shows that the existence and persistence of ‘overeducation’ can be explained by an extension of the efficiency wage model. When calibrated to fit the amounts of overeducation found in most empirical studies, the model implies that both the relative wage and the relative employment rate of high-skill workers depend inversely on aggregate economic activity. Keeping aggregate employment...

Overeducation, Job Competition and Unemployment

The changing wage and employment structure in some OECD countries has been attributed to increased levels of education and technical change in favour of skilled workers. However, in the Netherlands and some other OECD countries the wages of skilled workers did not rise, whereas investment in skills rose dramatically. This paper offers a theory which is able to explain the dramatic increase in t...

Unemployment Insurance, Wage Dynamics and Inequality over the Life Cycle

Unemployment Insurance, Wage Dynamics and Inequality over the Life Cycle We investigate the relationship between life cycle wages and individual membership of unemployment insurance schemes in Denmark. We separate permanent from transitory wages and characterise them using membership of unemployment insurance funds. We find that unemployment insurance is associated with lower wage growth hetero...

Wage Compression and the Unemployment Crisis: Labor Market Institutions, Skills, and Inequality-Unemployment Tradeoffs

On Wage Policies and Unemployment

In economies where the price of labour is determined outside of competitive markets the question arises as to whether the observed evolution of wages is likely to contribute to a decline in unemployment. I develop and discuss a benchmark, the neutral wage policy, to which the actual evolution of wages can be compared. Here, neutrality refers to the unemployment rate and not to the level of empl...