Scucca

The Economic Journal article that focuses on the impact of low skill supply on wages uses data that includes the following countries: Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland and the US. The paper looks in particular at the distinction between the US and the continental European countries. We know that skill wage differentials are smaller in the European countries. Rather than the result of labour protection policies and agencies, it finds evidence in support of the hypothesis that the "relative wages of low skilled workers in the US are lower than elsewhere as a result of the abundant net supply of low skilled workers in the US (Nickell and Bell, 1996; Nickell and Layard, 1999)"

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donsutherland1

Thank you.

aegyptos

25 million Mexicans.

dixon76710

All irrelevant to your claims that the US has a "low skills equilibrium" or "long tail of low skills". Neither concept has anything to do with "relative wages".

Scucca

Reference to immigration would certainly seem to complicate any comparison of the importance of labour protection policies and supply/demand criteria. Thus, it is theoretical possible that countries with lower wage dispersion, as occurs in western Europe, there will be a "positive selection" of immigrants (see Borjas,1987, 'Self-Selection and the Earnings of Immigrants', American Economic Review, pp 531–5). It is also true that the Mexican immigrant, compared to the American native, tends to be less educated (e.g. "in 1990, 68.3 percent of all Mexican immigrant men and 62.8 percent of recent Mexican immigrant men had completed nine or fewer years of school, compared to only 7.3 percent of U.S. native men" Chiquiar and Hanson, 2005, 'International Migration, Self-Selection, and the Distribution of Wages: Evidence from Mexico and the United States, Journal of Political Economy, Vol 113, pp 239-281). However, they do tend to be younger (so we're not comparing like with like) and also the use of immigration to feed low skilled labour is quite consistent with a low skills equilibrium.

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aegyptos

Like I said, 25 million Mexican helots. The US born population tends to be higher educated and have greater skills than the comparable British population as Dixon noted in his post (Leitch Review). That pretty much agrees with the evidence of my eyes when I visited Britain and northern Europe 9 years ago. I don't think the situation on the Continent is much better either.

Scucca

So? I haven't suggested otherwise. Like the US, we have a relatively high number of the low skilled. I've given you two sources that show that. The only difference is perhaps the nature of the immigration population. Britain, compared to countries like Germany, does tend to have an immigrant population with relatively high human capital.

Continental Europe, compared to the US, has a substantially different skills distribution. The Economic Journal article is of particular importance in demonstrating that, given it utilises an attempt to measure skills and avoids more simplistic comparisons (either in terms of the wage distribution or simple measures such as years of education)

You've presented nothing that would dispute the Economic Journal article's findings

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dixon76710

You havent presented a source yet that even used the term "low skills equilibrium" or a "long tail of low skills" in relation to the US. So full of it.

dixon76710

.................

dixon76710

He still hasnt answered your simple question. WHICH ECONOMIES! He hasnt answered because he has no answer.