Inter-industry Wage Premia in Portugal: Evidence from EU-SILC data

Biagetti, Marco and Scicchitano, Sergio (2009): Inter-industry Wage Premia in Portugal: Evidence from EU-SILC data. Unpublished.

Abstract

In this paper we investigate whether inequality in the inter-industry wage premia may be explained by unobserved differences in workers’ educational skills. We use the 2007 EU-SILC data set for Portugal, a nation which can be considered a case-study, due to its high inter-industry wage dispersion. Applying both OLS and quantile regression techniques, our results suggest that this unobserved heterogeneity is not a relevant matter in the wage premia determination. We thus corroborate the previous empirical contribution to Economic Letters performed by Martins (2004).

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Returns to education; inter-industry wage inequality; Quantile regression; Portugal
• Subjects: C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C1 - Econometric and Statistical Methods: General > C14 - Semiparametric and Nonparametric Methods; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J3 - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs > J31 - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials by Skill, Training, Occupation, etc.; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I2 - Education and Research Insititutions > I21 - Analysis of Education

References

Gibbons, R. and L. Katz, 1992, Does Unmeasured Ability Explain Inter-Industry Wage Differentials?, Review of Economic Studies 59, 515–535.

Hartog, J., Pereira, P.T., and J.C. Vieira, 2000, Inter-industry wage dispersion in Portugal: high but falling. Empirica 27, 353–364.

Koenker, R. and G. Bassett, 1978, Regression quantiles. Econometrica 46, 33– 50.

Krueger, A. and L. Summers, 1988, Efficiency Wages and the Inter-Industry Wage Structure, Econometrica 56, 259–293.

Martins P., 2004, Industry Wage Dispersion: Evidence from the Wage Distribution, Economics Letters, 83(2), 157-163.