IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bge/wpaper/94.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Wage Inequality in a Frictional Labor Market

Author

Listed:
  • Joel Shapiro

Abstract

Wage inequality in the United States has grown substantially in the past two decades. Standard supply-demand analysis in the empirics of inequality (e.g. Katz and Murphy (1992)) indicates that we may attribute some of this trend to an outward shift in the demand for high skilled labor. In this paper we examine a simple static channel in which the wage premium for skill may grow - increased firm entry. We consider a model of wage dispersion where there are two types of workers and homogeneous firms must set wages and preferences for what type of worker they would like to hire. We find that both the wage differential and the demand for high skill workers can increase with the proportion of high skill workers - these high skill workers therefore "create" their own demand without exogenous factors. In addition, within group wage inequality can increase in step with the between group wage inequality. Simulations of the model are provided in order to compare the findings with empirical results.

Suggested Citation

  • Joel Shapiro, 2003. "Wage Inequality in a Frictional Labor Market," Working Papers 94, Barcelona School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:bge:wpaper:94
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.barcelonagse.eu/sites/default/files/working_paper_pdfs/94.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Varian, Hal R, 1980. "A Model of Sales," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(4), pages 651-659, September.
    2. Shouyong Shi, 1998. "Frictional Assignment," Working Paper 988, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    3. Albrecht, James W. & Gautier, Pieter A. & Vroman, Susan B., 2003. "Matching with multiple applications," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 67-70, January.
    4. Daron Acemoglu, 1999. "Changes in Unemployment and Wage Inequality: An Alternative Theory and Some Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(5), pages 1259-1278, December.
    5. Daron Acemoglu, 1998. "Why Do New Technologies Complement Skills? Directed Technical Change and Wage Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(4), pages 1055-1089.
    6. Joel Shapiro, 2002. "Wage inequality in a frictional labor market," Economics Working Papers 614, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    7. Eli Berman & John Bound & Zvi Griliches, 1994. "Changes in the Demand for Skilled Labor within U. S. Manufacturing: Evidence from the Annual Survey of Manufactures," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(2), pages 367-397.
    8. Juhn, Chinhui & Murphy, Kevin M & Pierce, Brooks, 1993. "Wage Inequality and the Rise in Returns to Skill," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(3), pages 410-442, June.
    9. Daron Acemoglu & Robert Shimer, 2000. "Wage and Technology Dispersion," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 67(4), pages 585-607.
    10. Shi, Shouyong, 2001. "Frictional Assignment. I. Efficiency," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 98(2), pages 232-260, June.
    11. Robert Shimer, 2005. "The Assignment of Workers to Jobs in an Economy with Coordination Frictions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(5), pages 996-1025, October.
    12. Stahl, Dale O, II, 1989. "Oligopolistic Pricing with Sequential Consumer Search," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 700-712, September.
    13. Kevin Lang & Michael Manove & William T. Dickens, 2005. "Racial Discrimination in Labor Markets with Posted Wage Offers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1327-1340, September.
    14. Eli Berman & John Bound & Zvi Griliches, 1993. "Changes in the Demand for Skilled Labor within U.S. Manufacturing Industries: Evidence from the Annual Survey of Manufacturing," NBER Working Papers 4255, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Burdett, Kenneth & Judd, Kenneth L, 1983. "Equilibrium Price Dispersion," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(4), pages 955-969, July.
    16. Gerard R. Butters, 1977. "Equilibrium Distributions of Sales and Advertising Prices," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 44(3), pages 465-491.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Joel Shapiro, 2002. "Wage inequality in a frictional labor market," Economics Working Papers 614, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    2. Ben Heijdra & Jenny Ligthart, 2009. "Labor tax reform, unemployment, and search," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 16(1), pages 82-104, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Philipp Kircher, 2009. "Efficiency of Simultaneous Search," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(5), pages 861-913, October.
    2. Claudio Michelacci & Javier Suarez, 2006. "Incomplete Wage Posting," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(6), pages 1098-1123, December.
    3. Daron Acemoglu, 1999. "Changes in Unemployment and Wage Inequality: An Alternative Theory and Some Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(5), pages 1259-1278, December.
    4. Merlino, Luca Paolo, 2012. "Discrimination, technology and unemployment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 557-567.
    5. Daron Acemoglu, 2003. "Cross-Country Inequality Trends," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(485), pages 121-149, February.
    6. David H. Autor & Frank Levy & Richard J. Murnane, 2003. "The skill content of recent technological change: an empirical exploration," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Nov.
    7. Shapiro, Joel, 2004. "Income taxation in a frictional labor market," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(3-4), pages 465-479, March.
    8. Richard Rogerson & Robert Shimer & Randall Wright, 2004. "Search-Theoretic Models of the Labor Market-A Survey," NBER Working Papers 10655, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Donna, Javier D. & Schenone, Pablo & Veramendi, Gregory F., 2020. "Networks, frictions, and price dispersion," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 406-431.
    10. Shapiro, Joel, 2006. "Wage and effort dispersion," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 92(2), pages 163-169, August.
    11. Atayev, Atabek, 2022. "Uncertain product availability in search markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    12. Fatih Guvenen & Burhanettin Kuruscu, 2010. "A Quantitative Analysis of the Evolution of the US Wage Distribution, 1970–2000," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2009, Volume 24, pages 227-276, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Greg Kaplan & Guido Menzio & Leena Rudanko & Nicholas Trachter, 2019. "Relative Price Dispersion: Evidence and Theory," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 68-124, August.
    14. Cecilia Garcia-Penalosa & Eve Caroli & Philippe Aghion, 1999. "Inequality and Economic Growth: The Perspective of the New Growth Theories," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1615-1660, December.
    15. Hämäläinen, Saara, 2018. "Competitive search obfuscation," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 38-63.
    16. Dirk Bergemann & Benjamin Brooks & Stephen Morris, 2021. "Search, Information, and Prices," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(8), pages 2275-2319.
    17. Joseph K. Kaboski, 2009. "Education, Sectoral Composition and Growth," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 12(1), pages 168-182, January.
    18. Maciej K. Dudek & ówna Handlowa, 2006. "On Artificial Structural Unemployment," Computing in Economics and Finance 2006 171, Society for Computational Economics.
    19. John Kennes & Daniel le Maire, 2010. "Coordination Frictions and Job Heterogeneity: A Discrete Time Analysis," Economics Working Papers 2010-05, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    20. Aimee Chin & Chinhui Juhn & Peter Thompson, 2004. "Technical Change and the Wage Structure During the Second Industrial Revolution: Evidence from the Merchant Marine, 1865-1912," NBER Working Papers 10728, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    wage posting; wage inequality; search;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J41 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Labor Contracts

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bge:wpaper:94. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Bruno Guallar (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bargses.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.