IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/zewdip/3288.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Are Wages in Southern Europe more Flexible? The Effects of a Cohort Size on European Earnings

Author

Listed:
  • Brunello, Giorgio
  • Lauer, Charlotte

Abstract

We exploit the cross?country and time variation in the demographics and education structure of 11 European countries to study how cohort size has affected real earnings in Europe. When we pool the data of all countries, we find that cohort size has a negative and statistically significant effect on the earnings of the older cohorts – aged between 35 and 54 – but no statistically significant effect on the earnings of younger cohorts – aged 20 to 34. The negative effect of cohort size on earnings is completely driven by Southern European countries, a result which we relate to institutional differences. While the share of 20-34 year-olds in the population has declined in the EU11 by 10.20 percent between 1991 and 2001, the share of 35-54 year-olds has increased by 9.32 percent. Our estimates suggest that, as a consequence of these significant demographic changes, the real earnings of the younger cohorts have increased on average by a tiny 0.06 percent, while the earnings of the older cohorts have declined by 0.93 percent, a modest variation.

Suggested Citation

  • Brunello, Giorgio & Lauer, Charlotte, 2005. "Are Wages in Southern Europe more Flexible? The Effects of a Cohort Size on European Earnings," ZEW Discussion Papers 05-45, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:zewdip:3288
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/24136/1/dp0545.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Alfonso Rosolia & Roberto Torrini, 2007. "The generation gap: relative earnings of young and old workers in Italy," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 639, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    2. Mikael C. Bergbrant & Patrick J. Kelly, 2016. "Macroeconomic Expectations and the Size, Value, and Momentum Factors," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 45(4), pages 809-844, December.
    3. Biagi, Federico & Lucifora, Claudio, 2008. "Demographic and education effects on unemployment in Europe," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(5), pages 1076-1101, October.
    4. Guido Schwerdt & Jarkko Turunen, 2007. "Growth In Euro Area Labor Quality," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 53(4), pages 716-734, December.
    5. Santiago Budría & Pedro Telhado-Pereira, 2011. "Educational Qualifications And Wage Inequality: Evidence For Europe," Revista de Economia Aplicada, Universidad de Zaragoza, Departamento de Estructura Economica y Economia Publica, vol. 19(2), pages 5-34, Autumn.
    6. Biagi, Federico & Lucifora, Claudio, 2005. "Demographic and Education Effects on Unemployment in Europe: Economic Factors and Labour Market Institutions," IZA Discussion Papers 1806, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Elena Giarda, 2008. "The worsening of wage expectations in Italy: a study based on administrative data," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 29(1), pages 64-87, March.
    8. Guido Schwerdt & Jarkko Turunen, 2007. "Changes in Human Capital: Implications for Productivity Growth in the Euro Area," ifo Working Paper Series 53, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    cohort size; wages; Europe;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts

    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:zbw:zewdip:3288. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zemande.html .

    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.