TY  - JOUR
AU  - Heathcote,Jonathan
AU  - Storesletten,Kjetil
AU  - Violante,Giovanni L.
TI  - The Macroeconomic Implications of Rising Wage Inequality in the United States
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14052
PY  - 2008
Y2  - June 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14052
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14052.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Jonathan Heathcote
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
Research Department
90 Hennepin Ave.
Minneapolis, MN 55401
Tel: (612) 204-6385
E-Mail: heathcote@minneapolisfed.org

Kjetil Storesletten
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
Research Department
90 Hennepin Ave.
Minneapolis, MN 55401
Tel: +47 22844009
E-Mail: kjetil.storesletten@econ.uio.no

Giovanni L. Violante
Department of Economics
New York University
19 W. 4th Street
New York, NY 10012-1119
Tel: 212/992-9771
Fax: 212/995-3932
E-Mail: glv2@nyu.edu
AB  - In recent decades, the US wage structure has been transformed by a rising college premium, a narrowing gender gap, and increasing persistent and transitory residual wage dispersion. This paper explores the implications of these changes for cross-sectional inequality in hours worked, earnings and consumption, and for welfare. The framework for the analysis is an incomplete-markets overlapping-generations model in which individuals choose education and form households, and households choose consumption and intra-family time allocation. An explicit production technology underlies equilibrium prices for labor inputs differentiated by gender and education. The model is parameterized using micro data from the PSID, the CPS and the CEX. With the changing wage structure as the only primitive force, the model can account for the key trends in cross-sectional US data. We also assess the role played by education, labor supply, and saving in providing insurance against shocks, and in exploiting opportunities presented by changes in the relative prices of different types of labor.
ER  -