Gender Gaps across Countries and Skills: Supply, Demand and the Industry Structure The gender wage gap varies widely across countries and across skill groups within countries. Interestingly, there is a positive cross-country correlation between the unskilled-to-skilled gender wage gap and the corresponding gap in hours worked. Based on a canonical supply and demand framework, this positive corr...

The public sector hires disproportionately more educated workers. To rationalize this finding, we propose a model with perfectly competitive private sector, and non-Walrasian sector. Our economy also features heterogeneity across individuals jobs, simple sorting mechanism that generates underemployment - workers performing unskilled jobs. We find the public-sector wage differential excess accou...

Becker’s theory of human capital predicts that minimum wages should reduce training investments for affected workers because they prevent these workers from taking wage cuts necessary to finance training. In contrast, in noncompetitive labor markets, minimum wages tend to increase training of affected workers because they induce firms to train their unskilled employees. We provide new estimates...

In this lecture, we address the evidence on the Skill Biased Technical Change hypothesis. There are at least Þve class of theories that I can discern, and I'll say something about each time permitting: 1. Capital skill complementarity 2. Correlations and timing: Computer technology and skill upgrading 3. Characteristics of technology and tasks: Changes in the organization of work 4. Nelson/Phel...

This report examme and evaluates recent steps taken m France to ehmmate temporally the employers’ socml security payroll tax and to mtroduce Governmentsubsldlzed employment trammg programs tn an effort to open up Jobs for the unemployed Much attention has been gwen I” the Umted States and abroad to the problem of the sharp growth m the level of unemployment, parttcularly among those under age 2...

Patterns of Integration: Low Educated People and their Jobs in Norway, Italy and Hungary The paper looks at how the distribution of jobs by complexity and firms’ willingness to hire low educated labor for jobs of different complexity contribute to unskilled employment in Norway, Italy and Hungary. In search of how unqualified workers can attend complex jobs, it compares their involvement in var...

OBJECTIVES Most data on HIV prevalence in low-risk populations in sub-Saharan Africa are drawn from sentinel surveys of pregnant women attending antenatal clinics and are not representative of formal sector workforces. We surveyed workforces in southern Africa to determine HIV prevalence among formally employed, largely male populations. METHODS Voluntary, anonymous, unlinked seroprevalence s...

What are the impacts of free trade agreement on the social welfare of different groups of labor force in a developed country? What is the impact of free trade on a developed country’s income disparity? What is the effect of free trade on the skill distribution of a developed country? The objective of this paper is to address the above questions in a simple two-sector generalequilibrium North-So...

The aim of this study was to analyse the role of differences in alcohol consumption and other risk factors for alcoholism established in late adolescence, for later differences in the distribution of alcoholism between social classes among young men. Data on risk factors in childhood and adolescence, e.g. risk use of alcohol, was collected among 49,323 men, born 1949-1951, at conscription for c...