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This dissertation consists of three essays, which mainly talk about the wage inequality caused by outsourcing in the source countries like the US. The title of the first essay is “Does Outsourcing Always Benefit Skilled Labor? A Dynamic Product Cycle Model Approach.” To understand why outsourcing did not cause wage inequality in the 1970s, I build a dynamic product cycle model with three kinds of labor inputs, scientists, white-collar workers, and blue-collar workers. First, only a homogenous representative producer exists in the model and then the paper allows for producer heterogeneity. According to my theoretical model, outsourcing can hurt skilled labor and does not cause wage inequality if outsourcing industries are absolutely blue-collar worker-intensive compared to non-outsourcing industries. Only scientists who conduct research and development always benefit from outsourcing. The second essay is an empirical work. The title is “Outsourcing, Innovation, and Wage Inequality in the United States: What Happened to the Outsourcing Effect on Wage Inequality in the 1970s?” I find that, in the 1970s, white-collar workers’ wages deteriorated and blue-collar workers’ wages were non-decreasing. R&D workers always benefit from outsourcing. Except computers and high-technology capital, innovation expenditure on wage payment was an additional source of wage inequality in the 1980s. The last essay is named “Beyond the Wage Inequality, the Impact of Outsourcing on the U.S. Labor Market.” To understand the impact of outsourcing on employment, I examine laborers’ ages, gender ratio, years of education, and job tenure and retention rates. By employing the January Current Population Survey (CPS) data, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) production data, and outsourcing data provided by Feenstra and Hanson, I find that outsourcing decreased blue-collar laborers’ average years of completed education; increased the hiring of females into white-collar workers, and increased job stability of unskilled and skilled laborers in the 1980s. Thus, outsourcing did not take away unskilled laborers’ jobs but hindered new hiring of young unskilled workers

Since the 1980's, wage inequality in the U.S. has been dramatically increasing. I investigate the impact of occupational structure, measured at the three-digit level, on this trend of growing wage inequality. The investigation is conducted in terms of three major research tasks. First, I test the validity of the 'disaggregate structuration' view in relation to growing wage inequality. The 'disaggregate structuration' view is suggested as an alternative to big class theories. Theorists of the 'disaggregate structuration' view assert that an occupation is a gemeinschaftlich community characterized by internal homogeneity. Thus, this view implies that most of the rise in inequality occurs between occupations and that within-occupational inequality is actually decreasing, due to the progress of 'occupationalization.' My analyses, however, find that the majority of the growth in inequality has occurred within occupations. Secondly, I thus seek a more delineated explanation for the causes of rising within-occupational inequality. I investigate whether previously proposed hypotheses can account for this phenomenon. Hypotheses that I test include demographic change, deindustrialization, unions, insecure employment relations, increases in the return to skill, and changes of firm organizations. Although smaller than within-occupational inequality, between-occupational inequality has also been growing during this period. Thirdly, I therefore investigate the changes of between-occupational inequality. Since between- occupational inequality is a weighted sum of occupational mean wages, I examine whether the same hypotheses tested for within-occupational inequality can explain the changes in occupational mean wages over time. Using the Current Population Survey (CPS) from 1983 to 2002, I find that as within-occupational inequality has grown faster than between-occupational inequality, the direct association between occupational structure and wage inequality has declined over this period. While the importance of general skills (i.e., education) in determining workers' wages is growing, the importance of occupation-specific skills is declining. For regression models of hourly wages, the amount of R-squared increase by adding three-digit occupational codes (331 occupational dummies) in addition to general skills (5 dummies of education) has decreased for this period. Therefore, the strong version of 'aggregate structuration' and 'occupationalization' is not supported. I would like to note, however, that the R-squared of hourly wage increases jumped significantly when we use three-digit occupational codes instead of one-digit occupational codes even after adjusting for the degrees of freedom. Thus, the weak version of structuration is not rejected. For multivariate tests, inequality indexes and other variables by detailed occupation are extracted from each year's CPS and merged into one panel data file with occupation as a unit of analysis. Multi-level growth models are then estimated using detailed occupational categories as the unit of analysis in order to assess how the structural characteristics of occupations affect changes in mean wages and wage inequality over this time period. Contrary to the expectations of the skill-biased technological change hypothesis, changes in the distribution of education do not affect the growth of wage inequality within occupations. In contrast to the traditional view of unions as promoting wage equality, within-occupational inequality is increased by unionization. The increase of female labor market participation seems to pull down inequality in an occupation. Deindustrialization does not account for the rise of intra-occupational inequality, while insecure employment relations do. As expected by the organizational change view, inequality grows faster in high skill jobs and service jobs. Regarding between-occupational inequality, traditional explanations do better jobs in accounting for its change than for within-occupational inequality. Skill biased technological changes and unions have positive effects on occupational mean wages. Multi-level growth models provide additional evidence against disaggregate structuration. The disaggregate structuration view assumes that occupational common interests will be achieved as accomplishment of active occupational associations. Thus, the changes of occupational mean wage, which is a clearly common interest of members in an occupation, should be explained by occupation itself, not by other demographic and institutional variables. Contrary to this expectation, most of the within-occupational variation are not explained well by other demographic and institutional variables, including race, gender, and unions. In conclusion, although sociologists often view occupation as the back-bone of the stratification system, the rise in within-occupational inequality suggests that broader, more complex approaches may be needed in order to better explain the increasing disparity in wages. I suggest that more attention should be given to firm level studies in which changes inside and between firms are investigated. / text

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I depart from traditional theories of production fragmentation to allow for the explicit consideration of frictions on the labor and product markets. These are crucial in yielding outcomes that cast some shadows on “optimistic” views of outsourcing that emerge from frictionless models. While in general the overall positive welfare effect is confirmed, the distributional consequences may be particularly adverse for some categories of workers. The three chapters that constitute the thesis deal, respectively, with the role played by the imperfect mobility of workers, imperfect competition in outsourcing industries, and imperfect factor price adjustments.

This thesis investigates the co-evolution of the changing structure of occupations and the growth in wage inequality in Britain since the 1970s and the subsequent stabilisation during the 2000s. Occupations provide the single most important unit of analysis for economic inequality in stratification research, providing the basis for socioeconomic status, prestige scales, job desirability scores, and social class schemas. Although there was a ‘massive rise’ in wage inequality, relatively little is known about the relationship between the occupational structure and the growth in wage inequality. Since sociologists tend to place a lot of emphasis on the role of occupations in structuring economic inequalities, we might expect them to play a key role in accounting for trends in overall wage inequality. More recent strands of sociological theory, however, argue that the link between occupations and economic inequalities might have been weakening over time. This thesis assesses these claims in relation to the over time trends in between- and within-occupation-inequality. It finds that the growth in overall wage inequality was largely due to growing inequality between occupations, not within them. The growth in between-occupation inequality was largely due to higher-paying occupations receiving the largest wage gains. Furthermore, and perhaps surprisingly, only a handful of occupations account for the majority of the rise in wage inequality, indicating caution should be exercised in generating accounts about the role for occupations in accounting for overall inequality. Along the way, this thesis attempts to address the extent to which the structuring of the growth in wage inequality by occupations was due to the changing composition of incumbents within occupations (namely the rise in educational attainment), in spite of data limitations. Finally, this thesis takes to task what the implications of the ‘massive rise’ in wage inequality implies for the broader categories sociologists use to capture economic inequalities based on aggregations of occupations.

This thesis explores several aspects of the labour market in Serbia and Croatia during the process of transition from socialism to a market economy. First, it examines how women??s position in the labour market has changed in Serbia. Using five annual Labour Force Surveys (2001-2005), I find that the gender wage gap is still very low in Serbia, and is even decreasing during this period. However, decompositions that apply the Oaxaca (1974) methodology reveal that the unexplained component of the gap is very large, and is increasing. Likewise, quantile decompositions suggest that while the raw gap is falling at each of the quantiles analysed, the unexplained component is increasing at most quantiles at the same time. Thus, the relatively small gap in earnings could be masking considerable discrimination in the labour market. Second, changes in men??s wage inequality in Serbia in the period from 2001 to 2005 are analysed using five annual Labour Force Surveys. Changes in the distribution of earnings are examined using the Lemieux (2002) decomposition methodology. I find that the change in wage inequality is mostly driven by changes in wage premiums, while the effect of changes in the composition of the labour force is very small. Isolating the effect of the emerging private sector reveals that changes in the private sector size and wage premium account for an average 25 percent of the changes in inequality during this period. Third, the effect that the recent war in Croatia (1991-1995) had on the educational and employment trajectories of the 1971 birth cohort of men is investigated. This birth cohort was most affected by the armed forces draft. I treat the occurrence of the war as a natural experiment and use data from the Croatian and Slovenian Labour Force Surveys. Applying the difference-in-difference framework and comparing this cohort to adjacent cohorts, women, and to respective cohorts in Slovenia, a neighbouring country that did not experience war, I find that the war has had a negative effect on educational outcomes and a small positive effect on the employment and earnings outcomes of this cohort of men.

This thesis explores several aspects of the labour market in Serbia and Croatia during the process of transition from socialism to a market economy. First, it examines how women??s position in the labour market has changed in Serbia. Using five annual Labour Force Surveys (2001-2005), I find that the gender wage gap is still very low in Serbia, and is even decreasing during this period. However, decompositions that apply the Oaxaca (1974) methodology reveal that the unexplained component of the gap is very large, and is increasing. Likewise, quantile decompositions suggest that while the raw gap is falling at each of the quantiles analysed, the unexplained component is increasing at most quantiles at the same time. Thus, the relatively small gap in earnings could be masking considerable discrimination in the labour market. Second, changes in men??s wage inequality in Serbia in the period from 2001 to 2005 are analysed using five annual Labour Force Surveys. Changes in the distribution of earnings are examined using the Lemieux (2002) decomposition methodology. I find that the change in wage inequality is mostly driven by changes in wage premiums, while the effect of changes in the composition of the labour force is very small. Isolating the effect of the emerging private sector reveals that changes in the private sector size and wage premium account for an average 25 percent of the changes in inequality during this period. Third, the effect that the recent war in Croatia (1991-1995) had on the educational and employment trajectories of the 1971 birth cohort of men is investigated. This birth cohort was most affected by the armed forces draft. I treat the occurrence of the war as a natural experiment and use data from the Croatian and Slovenian Labour Force Surveys. Applying the difference-in-difference framework and comparing this cohort to adjacent cohorts, women, and to respective cohorts in Slovenia, a neighbouring country that did not experience war, I find that the war has had a negative effect on educational outcomes and a small positive effect on the employment and earnings outcomes of this cohort of men.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(経済学) / 甲第20147号 / 経博第545号 / 新制||経||280(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院経済学研究科経済学専攻 / (主査)准教授 遊喜 一洋, 教授 劉 徳強, 教授 神事 直人 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Economics / Kyoto University / DFAM