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Reworking the Wage Curve: Exploring the consistency of the model across time, space and demographic group

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  • Heather Boushey

Abstract

This paper extends Blanchflower & Oswald's (1994) work on the wage curve to the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the United States. The wage curve is more elastic in US metropolitan areas than prior research shows for the nation as a whole, and the wage curve varies over the business cycle, becoming more elastic in periods of higher unemployment. The most striking finding is that black workers have a more elastic wage curve than do white workers. Estimating the wage curve with the non-employment rate, a measure of underemployment, shows elasticities that are substantially higher than for wage curves estimated with the unemployment rate. This trend further increases the negative effects on pay for blacks, who are more likely than white workers to be underemployed.

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  • Heather Boushey, 2002. "Reworking the Wage Curve: Exploring the consistency of the model across time, space and demographic group," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(3), pages 293-311.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:revpoe:v:14:y:2002:i:3:p:293-311
    DOI: 10.1080/09538250220147859
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    2. Badi H. Baltagi & Bartlomiej Rokicki & Kênia Barreiro Souza, 2017. "The Brazilian wage curve: new evidence from the National Household Survey," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 53(1), pages 267-286, August.
    3. Baltagi, Badi H. & Rokicki, Bartlomiej, 2014. "The spatial Polish wage curve with gender effects: Evidence from the Polish Labor Survey," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 36-47.
    4. Esteban Sanroma & Raul Ramos, 2005. "Further Evidence on Disaggregated Wage Curves: The Case of Spain," Australian Journal of Labour Economics (AJLE), Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School, vol. 8(3), pages 227-243, September.
    5. Mark Partridge & Dan Rickman, 2010. "Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Modelling for Regional Economic Development Analysis," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(10), pages 1311-1328.
    6. Julie L. Hotchkiss & M. Melinda Pitts, 2007. "Evidence of demand factors in the determination of the labor market intermittency penalty," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2007-16, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    7. David G. Blanchflower & Andrew J. Oswald, 2005. "The Wage Curve Reloaded," NBER Working Papers 11338, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Haci Mevlut Karatas, 2017. "The Turkish Spatial Wage Curve," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 5(3), pages 1-21, August.
    9. Guilherme Cemin Paula & André M. Marques, 2022. "Brazilian Wage Curve: Further Evidence Based on Spatial Interactions in Times of Recession, 2012–2019," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 65(3), pages 689-708, September.

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