Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
Loading next page...
/lp/american-economic-association/learning-career-paths-and-the-distribution-of-wages-pupI0eS5xy
References
References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.
- Publisher
- American Economic Association
- Copyright
- Copyright © 2019 © American Economic Association
- ISSN
- 1945-7715
- DOI
- 10.1257/mac.20170390
- Publisher site
- See Article on Publisher Site
Abstract
AbstractWe develop a theory of career paths and earnings where agents organize in production hierarchies. Agents climb these hierarchies as they learn stochastically from others. Earnings grow as agents acquire knowledge and occupy positions with more subordinates. We contrast these and other implications with US census data for the period 1990 to 2010, matching the Lorenz curve of earnings and the observed mean experience-earnings profiles. We show the increase in wage inequality over this period can be rationalized with a shift in the level of the complexity and profitability of technologies relative to the distribution of knowledge in the population. (JEL D83, E24, J24, J31)
Journal
American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics – American Economic Association
Published: Jan 1, 2019