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Wages and Human Capital in the U.S. Financial Industry: 1909-2006

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Author Info
Thomas Philippon
Ariell Reshef
Abstract

We use detailed information about wages, education and occupations to shed light on the evolution of the U.S. financial sector over the past century. We uncover a set of new, interrelated stylized facts: financial jobs were relatively skill intensive, complex, and highly paid until the 1930s and after the 1980s, but not in the interim period. We investigate the determinants of this evolution and find that financial deregulation and corporate activities linked to IPOs and credit risk increase the demand for skills in financial jobs. Computers and information technology play a more limited role. Our analysis also shows that wages in finance were excessively high around 1930 and from the mid 1990s until 2006. For the recent period we estimate that rents accounted for 30% to 50% of the wage differential between the financial sector and the rest of the private sector.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 14644.

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Date of creation: Jan 2009
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14644

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
G2 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services
J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor
J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs
O3 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change
O32 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change - - - Management of Technological Innovation and R&D
O33 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
O51 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - U.S.; Canada

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