Task Prices, Skill Selection, and Wage Ine quality (joint with Michael Böhm and Felix Schran)
Abstract:
This paper develops a new method to estima te changing task prices per unit of skill from an economic model of sector choice. Applying our method to German administrative panel data, we establi sh important links between occupational trends and surging wage inequality. First, changes of task prices and occupational employment growth go hand i n hand. This fact contrasts with the relation of employment and average wag es, which are uncorrelated. It furthermore is consistent with shocks to dem and, for example via routinization or changing trade patterns. Second, the more an occupation grows, the larger is the skill difference between incumb ents on the one hand and entrants or leavers on the other hand. Aggregating these differences with total net entry accounts for most of the declining skills of growing occupations, which counteract the effect of task prices w hen looking at wages. Third, task prices explain a sizable share of rising wage dispersion. Our empirical model is able to reproduce the increase of u pper as well as lower-half wage inequality during the 1984-2010 period.
DTSTAMP:20260405T192634Z DTSTART:20190313T130000Z DTEND:20190313T140000Z SEQUENCE:0 TRANSP:OPAQUE END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR