Wage compression and employment in Europe. First evidence from the structure of earnings survey 2002.

Autor/in	Mourre, Gilles
Titel	Wage compression and employment in Europe. First evidence from the structure of earnings survey 2002. Gefälligkeitsübersetzung: Lohnkompression und Arbeitslosigkeit in Europa. Erste Erkenntnisse aus der Erhebung der Einkommensstruktur im Jahr 2002.
Quelle	Brüssel (2005), 35 S.; 273 KB PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei Link als defekt meldenVerfügbarkeit
Reihe	European economy. Economic papers. 232
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	online; gedruckt; Monographie
ISSN	1016-8060; 1725-3187
ISBN	92-894-8871-9
Schlagwörter	Bildungsniveau; Einkommensunterschied; Einkommenshöhe; Einkommensstruktur; Lohnhöhe; Nachfrageentwicklung; Arbeitskräftebedarf; Qualifikationsniveau; Internationaler Vergleich; Europäische Union
Abstract	"This paper aims at examining wage compression in Europe using the publicly available data on wages drawn from the Structure of Earnings Survey 2002. By wage compression, it is meant here that the difference in productivity across workers or firms is only partly reflected by the difference in wages. The paper specifically considers the existence of wage compression both across occupations and levels of education by means of cross-sectional econometric analysis. Looking at wage compression across occupations, robust evidence gives some support to the conventional view that there is a compressed wage distribution in Europe. While the estimated wage compression is even higher across the levels of education and is seen in a majority of industries, the evidence appears much less robust than that obtained across occupations. Wage compression seems to be higher in the euro area and EU15 than in the New Member States and the two Acceding Countries, which is in line with their more flexible wage bargaining setting. Likewise, wage compression mainly occurs in continental and southern countries, whilst no compression is detected in Anglo-Saxon countries and mixed evidence is found in Northern European countries. Moreover, the compression of wages is not uniform across wage levels, which is consistent with the stylised fact that there is more wage compression at the lower end of the earning distribution. Compared with the counterfactual where relative wages mirror relative productivity, wage compression would induce some job losses for low-skilled people. However, this paper does not provide conclusive empirical evidence on whether wage dispersion has a negative impact on total employment." Forschungsmethode: empirisch-quantitativ; empirisch; Querschnitt; Theoriebildung; Grundlagenforschung. Die Untersuchung bezieht sich auf den Zeitraum 2002 bis 2002. (author's abstract, IAB-Doku).
Erfasst von	Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, Nürnberg
Update	2006/3