The Structure of Wages: An International Comparison.

• Position: Bureau Books

The Structure of Wages: An International Comparison, part of the NBER's Comparative Labor Markets Series edited by Edward P. Lazear and Kathryn L. Shaw, is available from the University of Chicago Press this January.

The distribution of income, the rate of pay raises, and the mobility of employees are all crucial to our understanding of labor economics. But though there is much research on the distribution of wages across individuals in the economy, wage differentials within firms remain a mystery to economists. This volume represents a first effort to examine linked employer-employee data across countries and to analyze labor trends and their institutional background in the United States and eight European countries: Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and West Germany. A distinguished team of contributors reveal how a rising wage variance...