Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/207268 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 7877
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
This paper studies the relationship between changes in occupational employment, occupational wages, and rising overall wage inequality. Using long-running administrative panel data with detailed occupation codes, we first document that in all occupations, entrants and leavers earn lower wages than stayers. This empirical fact suggests substantial skill selection effects that are negative for growing occupations and positive for shrinking ones. We develop and estimate a model for prices paid per unit of skill in occupations, which incorporates occupation-specific skill accumulation over the career and endogenous switching across many occupations. Our results shed light on two important puzzles in prior literature. First, consistent with leading explanations for occupational employment changes, price and employment growth are positively related. Strong counteracting skill changes along the lines of our new empirical fact explain why occupational wages are unrelated to employment growth. Second, skill prices establish a long-suspected quantitative connection between occupational changes and the surge in wage inequality.
Subjects: 
skill prices
selection effects
multidimensional skill accumulation
occupational employment and wages
administrative panel data
wage inequality
JEL: 
J21
J23
J24
J31
Document Type: 
Working Paper
Appears in Collections:

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.