American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Wages and Employment in the United States and Germany: What Explains the Differences?
American Economic Review
vol. 93,
no. 3, June 2003
(pp. 573–602)
Abstract
Over the last 20 years the wage-education relationships in the United States and Germany have evolved very differently, while the education compositions of employment have evolved in a parallel fashion. In this paper, we show how these patterns shed light on the nature of recent technological change and highlight the importance of taking into account movements in the ratio of human capital to physical capital when examining changes in the returns to skill. Our analysis indicates that the United States could have prevented the increase in wage inequality observed in the 1980's by a faster accumulation of physical capital.Citation
Beaudry, Paul, and David A. Green. 2003. "Wages and Employment in the United States and Germany: What Explains the Differences? ." American Economic Review, 93 (3): 573–602. DOI: 10.1257/000282803322156990JEL Classification
- J24 Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
- J31 Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
- D24 Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
- E24 Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital
- O33 Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes