In this paper, I examine the sources of wage inequality changes among prime age male workers in Brazil during the 1980's and 1990's. Inequality increased in the 1980's and decreased in the 1990's. I begin by decomposing these changes into three effects. First, the effect due to changes in the skill distribution of the workers; second, the effect due to changes in skill prices and premiums; and third, the residual effect which is interpreted as due to changes in the distribution of unobservable skills and their prices. I find that most of the sources of these changes are due to changes in (i) the unabservable skill prices and (ii) the observable skill prices associated to industry, occupation and occupation status. After showing that these changes in skill prices are not consistent with the changes in the supply of and demand for labor during these periods, I examine the possibility that the minimum wage policy and the macreconomic instability of the period can explain these changes. I find that inflation is strongly associated with inequality mainly due to its unanticipated component. This may be interpreted as indirect evidence that the indexation system adopted in Brazil during the high-inflation years may be a mechanism through which inflation affected wage inequality.
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Paper provided by Department of Economics, Vanderbilt University in its series Working Papers with number
0215.
Find related papers by JEL classification: E64 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Incomes Policy; Price Policy J30 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - General J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials O10 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Hamermesh, Daniel S, 1986.
"Inflation and Labour Market Adjustment,"
Economica,
London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 53(29), pages 63-73, February.
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