IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jlabec/v18y2000i2p252-81.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Quality of Education, Productivity Changes, and Income Distribution

Author

Listed:
  • Mehta, Shailendra Raj

Abstract

A general equilibrium model of a dual economy is constructed with workers and managers and hierarchical production. Ability is continuous, and there is perfect competition in the product market. Higher quality of education is treated as a form of technical progress. An equilibrium wage profile is derived. Different kinds of technical and productivity changes yield different gainers and losers. Declines in the quality of education generally lead to an increase in inequality. Surprisingly, groups suffering from declines in quality of education often benefit at the costs of others. Parallels are drawn with recent experience. Copyright 2000 by University of Chicago Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Mehta, Shailendra Raj, 2000. "Quality of Education, Productivity Changes, and Income Distribution," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(2), pages 252-281, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlabec:v:18:y:2000:i:2:p:252-81
    DOI: 10.1086/209958
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/209958
    File Function: full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. See http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JOLE for details.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/209958?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marvin H. Kosters, 1991. "Workers and Their Wages: Changing Patterns in the United States," Books, American Enterprise Institute, number 52907, September.
    2. Lawrence F. Katz & Kevin M. Murphy, 1992. "Changes in Relative Wages, 1963–1987: Supply and Demand Factors," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(1), pages 35-78.
    3. Bulow, Jeremy I & Summers, Lawrence H, 1986. "A Theory of Dual Labor Markets with Application to Industrial Policy,Discrimination, and Keynesian Unemployment," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 4(3), pages 376-414, July.
    4. Bishop, John Hillman, 1989. "Is the Test Score Decline Responsible for the Productivity Growth Decline?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(1), pages 178-197, March.
    5. Dickens, William T & Katz, Lawrence F & Lang, Kevin & Summers, Lawrence H, 1989. "Employee Crime and the Monitoring Puzzle," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 7(3), pages 331-347, July.
    6. Shapiro, Carl & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1984. "Equilibrium Unemployment as a Worker Discipline Device," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(3), pages 433-444, June.
    7. Bound, John & Johnson, George, 1992. "Changes in the Structure of Wages in the 1980's: An Evaluation of Alternative Explanations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 371-392, June.
    8. Claudia Goldin & Robert A. Margo, 1992. "The Great Compression: The Wage Structure in the United States at Mid-Century," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(1), pages 1-34.
    9. Lawrence F. Katz & Lawrence H. Summers, 1989. "Industry Rents: Evidence and Implications," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 20(1989 Micr), pages 209-290.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ashraf El-Araby Aly & James Ragan, 2010. "Arab immigrants in the United States: how and why do returns to education vary by country of origin?," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 23(2), pages 519-538, March.
    2. Heshmati, Almas, 2007. "Labor Market Policy Options of the Kurdistan Regional Government," IZA Discussion Papers 3247, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. David Card & Jörg Heining & Patrick Kline, 2013. "Workplace Heterogeneity and the Rise of West German Wage Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(3), pages 967-1015.
    2. Kevin Lang, 2020. "Effort and wages: Evidence from the payroll tax," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(1), pages 108-139, February.
    3. David H. Autor & Lawrence F. Katz & Alan B. Krueger, 1998. "Computing Inequality: Have Computers Changed the Labor Market?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(4), pages 1169-1213.
    4. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Robert M. Hutchens, 1993. "Avoiding a Future of Unemployment and Low Wages: What Opportunities Are Open to Young Unskilled Workers?," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_100, Levy Economics Institute.
    6. Steven J. Davis & John Haltiwanger, 1996. "Employer Size and the Wage Structure in U.S. Manufacturing," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 41-42, pages 323-367.
    7. Dennis J. Snower, 1998. "Causes of changing earnings inequality," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 69-133.
    8. Partridge, Mark D. & Rickman, Dan S. & Levernier, William, 1996. "Trends in U.S. income inequality: Evidence from a panel of states," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 17-37.
    9. Rebitzer, James B & Taylor, Lowell J, 1995. "Do Labor Markets Provide Enough Short-Hour Jobs? An Analysis of Work Hours and Work Incentives," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 33(2), pages 257-273, April.
    10. James B. Rebitzer & Lowell J. Taylor, 1991. "Work Incentives and the Demand for Primary and Contingent Labor," NBER Working Papers 3647, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. R. Nahuis & H.M. de Groot, 2003. "Rising Skills Premia. You ain't seen nothing yet," Working Papers 03-02, Utrecht School of Economics.
    12. Agenor, Pierre-Richard & Aizenman, Joshua, 1997. "Technological change, relative wages, and unemployment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 187-205, February.
    13. repec:use:tkiwps:022 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Anthony Eisenbarth & Zhuo Fu Chen, 2022. "The evolution of wage inequality within local U.S. labor markets," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 56(1), pages 1-25, December.
    15. Colleen Carey & Stephen H. Shore, 2013. "From the Peaks to the Valleys: Cross-State Evidence on Income Volatility over the Business Cycle," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(2), pages 549-562, May.
    16. Elisa Giannone, 2017. "Skill-Biased Technical Change and Regional Convergence," 2017 Meeting Papers 190, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    17. Francois, Patrick, 1998. "Gender discrimination without gender difference: theory and policy responses," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 1-32, April.
    18. Lam, Kit-Chun & Liu, Pak-Wai, 2011. "Increasing dispersion of skills and rising earnings inequality," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 82-91, March.
    19. Teixeira, Paulino, 1999. "Investment in Good Jobs," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 21(6), pages 769-779, November.
    20. Hendricks, Lutz & Schoellman, Todd, 2014. "Student abilities during the expansion of US education," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 19-36.
    21. Schlicht, Ekkehart, . "Job Rents in a Stylized Labor Market," Chapters in Economics,, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    22. Måns Söderbom & Francis Teal & Anthony Wambugu, 2002. "Does firm size really affect earnings?," CSAE Working Paper Series 2002-08, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jlabec:v:18:y:2000:i:2:p:252-81. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JOLE .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.