Unions, Wage Gaps, and Wage Dispersion: New Evidence from the Americas Using a common methodology, the effects of unions on wage levels and wage dispersion are estimated for two neighboring countries, Bolivia and Chile, and for the U.S. The analysis shows that unions have broadly similar effects on the wage distribution within these three economies. The findings suggest that the political econo...

this paper evaluates the welfare effects of price changes in the main commodity groups in iran. using the iranian urban households’ data issued by the iranian statistics center over the period 1994-2007 we estimate the subsistence level. in addition, using the results from the linear expenditure system we calculate the price and income elasticities along with the compensation and equivalent var...

Job Competition and the Wage Curve The wage curve literature consistently finds a negative relationship between regional unemployment rates and regional wages; the most widely accepted theoretical explanations interpret the unemployment rate as a measure of job competition. This paper proposes new ways of measuring job competition, alternative to the unemployment rate, and finds that the negati...

In Brazil, different employers often report different racial classifications for the same worker. We use this variation in employer-reported race to identify wage discrimination. Workers whose reported race changes from non-white to white receive a wage increase; those who change from white to non-white realize a symmetric wage decrease. As much as 40 percent of the raw racial wage gap is expla...

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...

Women earn less than men but are not less satisfied with life. This paper argues that norms on the appropriate pay for women compared to men explain these findings. We take citizens’ approval of an equal rights amendment to the Swiss constitution as a proxy for the norm that “women and men shall have the right to equal pay for work of equal value”. We find that the gender wage gap narrows by on...