Presentation of the paper

Unconditional and Conditional Wage Polarization in Europe

Speaker

Paolo Naticchioni

Università degli Studi di Cassino

Abstract

Paolo Naticchioni (Università di Cassino),Riccardo Massari (Univ. La Sapienza) and Giuseppe Ragusa (Luiss)

The US labor market has become increasingly polarized both in terms of jobs and wages, and the routinization explanation is well established for these trends. Recent papers have found job polarization patterns also in Europe, while few evidence is available for wages. The goal of the paper is to investigate the dynamics on unconditional and conditional -on technologywages in Europe, using industry (EU KLEMS) and individual data (ECHP and EU-SILC). As for unconditional wages, both at the industry and individual level data there are no wage polarization trends at work. For the conditional impact of the routinization explanation, at the industry level we investigate the impact of ICT intensity on wages and hours worked by three skill groups. Our analysis does not provide evidence supporting the polarization of wages, while we detect job polarization trends. Interestingly, at the individual level we have some mild evidence in favor of polarization, due to the coecient e ect of service tasks, for the lower tail of the distribution, and of abstract task for the upper tail of the distribution. Institutions plays instead a role in explaining the increase in inequality in the lower tail of the distribution.

For more information: crenos@unica.it

Tel. +39 070 6756414    Fax +39 070 6756402