This paper introduces moral hazard into a standard general equilibrium model with heterogeneous …rms, to study the impact of trade liberalization on wage inequality between identical workers. I show that trade liberalization operates on two margins of inequality, generating betweenand within-…rm wage dispersion. While the former channel has been studied in recent papers, the latter is novel in ...

We present a simple three-class model in the Kaleckian tradition to investigate the implications of a dominant managerial class class for the dynamics of demand and distribution. Managers are hired by capitalists to supervise workers, but supervision results in surplus extraction and wage inequality. The adjustment of capacity utilization to accommodate goods market disequilibrium produces two ...

This paper looks at male wage inequality in the United Kingdom across industries and regions over a fifteen year period. After controlling for the heterogeneity of productivity characteristics across the population, that part of wage inequality which cannot be explained by observable worker characteristics is examined. This is undertaken at both the industry and regional level to assess the key...

Opening the capital account allows financially constrained firms to raise capital from abroad. Since capital and skilled labor are relative complements, this increases the relative demand for skilled labor versus unskilled labor, leading to higher wage inequality. Using aggregate data and exploiting variation in the timing of capital account openings across 20 mainly European countries, I find ...

Educational Self-Selection, Tasks Assignment and Rising Wage Inequality This paper presents a general equilibrium assignment model of workers to tasks with endogenous human capital formation and multidimensionality of skills. The model has 2 key features. First, skills are endogenous and multidimensional. Second, two types of assignment occur, workers self-select their education and firms assig...

There is growing evidence that firm-specific pay premiums are an important source of wage inequality. These premiums will contribute to the gender wage gap if women are less likely to work at high-paying firms or if women negotiate (or are offered) worse wage bargains with their employers than men. Using longitudinal data on the hourly wages of Portuguese workers matched with income statement i...

Job Search, Human Capital and Wage Inequality The objective of this paper is to construct and quantitatively assess an equilibrium search model with on-the-job search and general human capital accumulation. In the model workers enter the labour market with different abilities and firms differ in their productivities. Wages are dispersed because of search frictions and workers’ productivity diff...

This paper presents a dynamic model of structural unemployment and occupational choice in which an economy is subjected to aggregate reallocation shocks. Reallocation shocks, which change the relative labour productivity across occupations, drive variation in the distribution of workers across occupations. The wage paid to workers in a given occupation depends on its labour productivity and the...