Globalization and the Great U-Turn: Income Inequality                     Trends in 16 OECD Countries

Alderson, Arthur S.; Nielsen, François

doi:10.1086/341329

Cited by 593 publications

(398 citation statements)

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“…A number of important studies have documented factors that have led to fundamental alterations in employment and inequality, including globalization (Alderson and Nielsen 2002), technological change (Acemoglu 2002), financialization Lin and Tomaskovic-Devey 2013), and shareholder pressures (Cobb 2015;Jung 2015). Further, other studies have focused squarely on changes in employment practices, including the decline in ILMs (Cappelli 2001), new wagesetting practices ), the increased use of external hiring (Bidwell 2011), and the rise of nonstandard work arrangements (Ashford, George, and Blatt 2007;Cappelli and Keller 2013).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Growing Apart: The Changing Firm-Size Wage Premium and Its Inequality Consequences

Cobb

Lin

2017

Organization Science

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Wage inequality in the United States has risen dramatically over the past few decades, prompting scholars to develop a number of theoretical accounts for the upward trend. This study argues that large firms have been a prominent labor-market institution that mitigates inequality. By compensating their low-and middle-wage employees with a greater premium than their higher-wage counterparts, large U.S. firms reduced overall wage dispersion. Yet, broader changes to employment relations associated with the demise of internal labor markets and the emergence of alternative employment arrangements have undermined large firms' role as an equalizing institution. Using data from the Current Population Survey and the Survey of Income and Program Participation, we find that in 1989, although all private-sector workers benefited from a firm-size wage premium, the premium was significantly higher for individuals at the lower end and middle of the wage distribution compared to those at the higher end. Between 1989 and 2014, the average firm-size wage premium declined markedly. The decline, however, was exclusive to those at the lower end and middle of the wage distribution, while there was no change for those at the higher end. As such, the uneven declines in the premium across the wage spectrum could account for about 20% of rising wage inequality during this period, suggesting that firms are of great importance to the study of rising inequality.Keywords firm-size wage premium, inequality, internal labor market, employment relationship Disciplines Management Sciences and Quantitative MethodsThis journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons:

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Growing Apart: The Changing Firm-Size Wage Premium and Its Inequality Consequences

Cobb

Lin

2017

Organization Science

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“…For some time now, scholars have established a link between Left political institutions and inequality. Probably partly because data traditionally has been much more available on inequality than poverty, the political sources of inequality has been established much more thoroughly than the study of poverty (Alderson and Nielsen 2002;Gustafsson and Johansson 1999;Wallace et al 1999). Importantly, however, the exclusive focus on inequality seems somewhat unbalanced.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…5 Following the methodological and substantive motivations of similar analyses of inequality and poverty (e.g. Alderson andNielsen 1999, 2002;Brady 2002Brady , 2003bGustafsson and Johansson 1999), I present RE models. First, and most importantly, both crossnational and historical variation are crucial to the theoretical questions of interest.…”

Section: No Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Politics of Poverty: Left Political Institutions, the Welfare State, and Poverty

Brady

2003

Social Forces

101

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“…This is not surprising as, with the exception of education levels, all other variables show little variability across this group of countries. Surprisingly, the role of labour market institutions has been generally neglected (exceptions can be found in the socio-economic literature, which, however, often mixes alternative explanations without theoretical consistency -see for example Alderson and Nielsen, 2002, and the critique reported in Atkinson and Brandolini 2003).…”

Section: Labour Market Institutions and Distribution: Existing Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Labour Market Institutions and Income Inequality

Checchi¹,

Garca-Pealosa²

Economic Policy

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Abstract: The recent debate on trends in inequality in industrial countries has been marred by the lack of consensus about the relevant concept of inequality. Labour economists are concerned with inequality in earnings, macroeconomists with movements in the wage share, while policy-makers tend to focus on household income inequality. We provide a unifying framework to study the relationship between these three concepts of inequality and the way in which labour market institutions affect them. Institutions emerge as a key determinant of inequality, yet they play different roles depending on the extent to which they complement or substitute each other. As a result, we are able to propose a set of inequality minimizing institutions. Institutions that decrease inequality are, however, associated with higher unemployment, and our analysis allows us to quantify the magnitude of this trade-off. Terms of use: Documents in

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Globalization and the Great U-Turn: Income Inequality Trends in 16 OECD Countries

Cited by 593 publications

References 57 publications

Growing Apart: The Changing Firm-Size Wage Premium and Its Inequality Consequences

Growing Apart: The Changing Firm-Size Wage Premium and Its Inequality Consequences

The Politics of Poverty: Left Political Institutions, the Welfare State, and Poverty

Labour Market Institutions and Income Inequality

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