TY  - JOUR
AU  - Edin,Per-Anders
AU  - Holmlund,Bertl
TI  - The Swedish Wage Stucture: The Rise and Fall of Solidarity Wage Policy?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 4257
PY  - 1993
Y2  - January 1993
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w4257
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w4257.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Per-Anders Edin
Department of Economics
Uppsala University
Box 513
751 20 Uppsala  SWEDEN
Tel: 46-18-181097
Fax: 46-18-181478
E-Mail: per-anders.edin@nek.uu.se
M1  - published as Per-Anders Edin, Bertil Holmlund. "The Swedish Wage Structure: The Rise and Fall of Solidarity Wage Policy?," in Richard B. Freeman and Lawrence F. Katz, Editors, "Differences and Changes in Wage Structures" University of Chicago Press (1995)

AB  - Wage inequality in Sweden declined precipitously during the 1960s and the 1970s. There was a sharp reduction in overall wage dispersion and in the relative earnings advantage of highly-educated workers, a marked narrowing of wage differences between men and women, and a trend increase in youth relative wages. There was also a substantial narrowing of wage differentials among workers within broad occupational and educational groups. The trend decline in wage inequality was broken in the 1980s. Wage differentials along several dimensions have widened modestly from the rnid-1980s to the early 1990s. Much of the Swedish discussion has taken it for granted that the pay compression has been driven by the egalitarian ambitions of strong and coordinated trade unions. Our analysis of the Swedish wage structure suggests that institutions are only part of the story. We show that conventional demand and supply factors can go a substantial way towards explaining some key relative wage movements in Sweden.
ER  -