Skills and wage inequality in Greece: evidence from matched employer-employee data, 1995-2002

The Hellenic Observatory (2009) Skills and wage inequality in Greece: evidence from matched employer-employee data, 1995-2002. Hellenic Observatory Papers on Greece and Southeast Europe (GreeSE Paper No 26). Hellenic Observatory, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK.

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Abstract

This paper examines changes in the Greek wage distribution over 1995-2002 and the role of skill in these changes. The methodology adopted is the Machado-Mata counterfactual decomposition, which separates the part of wage changes that is due to job and workers' characteristics (composition effects) from the part due to the returns to these characteristics (price effects). We find that mean wages have not increased substantially, but wage inequality has, mostly at the upper tail of the distribution. The role of skill has been decisive. Falling tenure levels at all but the very high wage deciles, and rising education across the board, have carried much of the inequalityincreasing influence of overall composition effects. Although to a lesser extent, changes in the returns to skill have contributed to inequality by forming a U-shaped pattern along the wage distribution. This pattern is further reinforced when price-effects of skill are added together with the composition effect of tenure to produce the share of skill-effects that is responsive to market forces. Drawing on this evidence, we make a case for the routinization hypothesis.

Item Type:	Monograph (Working Paper)
Official URL:	http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/hellenicObservato...
Additional Information:	© 2009 Rebekka Christopoulou and Theodora Kosma
Divisions:	European Institute Hellenic Observatory
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions D History General and Old World > DF Greece H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor
Date Deposited:	03 Jun 2009 14:29
Last Modified:	15 Sep 2023 23:15
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/24198

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