A Theory of Inter-Industry Wage Differentials (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from A Theory of Inter-Industry Wage Differentials<br><br>The purpose of this paper is to present a mode which broadly fits some of the salient features of inter-industry wage differentials. Several recent empirical papers have found wage differences across industries to be large and persistent. They also show high concordance across occupations and countries. High wages appear to be paid in industries that have high capital/labor ratios and are highly profitable. Our model explains these facts on the basis of firm-specific human capital accumulation by individual workers. We focus on the bargaining between experienced workers and the firm over the division of the surplus output an experienced worker produces over that produced by inexperienced workers. We show that this surplus, and therefore equilibrium wages of trained workers, depends on the capital/labor ratio when the technology has putty-clay features. We also show that when there is multilateral bargaining between all firms and experienced workers, wages also depend on the profitability of the firm.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.