Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/94764 
Year of Publication: 
2000
Series/Report no.: 
IUI Working Paper No. 529
Publisher: 
The Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IUI), Stockholm
Abstract: 
Centralized wage-setting institutions compress relative wages. Motivated by this fact, we investigate the effects of centralized wage setting on the industry distribution of employment. We examine Sweden's industry distribution from 1960 to 1994 and compare it to the U.S. distribution over the same period. We relate U.S.-Swedish differences in the industry distribution and their evolution over time to the structure of relative wages between and within industries. The empirical results identify the rise and fall of centralized wage-setting arrangements as a major factor in the evolution of Sweden's industry distribution. The compression associated with centralized wage-setting shifted the industry distribution of Swedish employment in three respects: away from industries with high wage dispersion among workers, away from industries with a high mean wage, and, most powerfully, away from industries with a low mean wage. By the middle 1980s, these wage structure effects accounted for about 40 percent of U.S.-Swedish differences in the industry distribution. The dissolution of Sweden's centralized wage-setting arrangements beginning in 1983 led to widening wage differentials and a reversal in the evolution of U.S.-Swedish differences in industry structure.
Subjects: 
Industry distribution of employment
Labor market institutions
Labor market policy
Wage dispersion
Wage-setting institutions
JEL: 
J23
J51
L50
P52
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
514.16 kB





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