Egalitarian and elitist education systems as the basis for international differences in wage inequality

Abstract

This paper investigates one reason why some countries have experienced a strong increase in wage inequality over the last decades while others have not. The explanation is based on the link between the quality of education and induced technological change. A country with qualitatively better-educated skilled workers, relative to unskilled workers, has a higher ratio of human capital to labour than a country where the quality of education is more equal across education levels. These differences lead to different paths of induced technological change across countries, which in turn imply different histories of the distribution of labour income.wage inequality, Quality of education, Elitist and egalitarian education systems, Biased technological change, Distribution of labour income