A Comparative Analysis of the Evolution of Gender Wage Discrimination: Spain Versus Galicia.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the degree of female wage discrimination in the Spanish region of Galicia relative to the rest of Spain. The analysis starts from an established fact: women’s average earnings are lower than men’s. First, we try to show the causes behind this wage differential. Next, we discuss the evolution of the wage gap between 1995 and 2002, in order to bring some light on the factors potentially accounting for wage discrimination persistence in Galicia and Spain. We will analyze the distribution of the degree of discrimination using Discrimination Curve and Discrimination Indexes proposed by Del Río et al. These indicators have the advantage of being decomposable, allowing a more exhaustive rendering of the factors characterizing wage discrimination, as well as the quantification of the incidence of discrimination for different social groups. Thus we can determine, not only if the degree of discrimination has had a similar evolution in both regions, but also if discrimination is more strongly exerted against the same social groups both in Galicia and Spain.

Gender wage discrimination in Galicia

The wage discrimination by gender in the Galician region is one of the highest in Spain, although it presents one of the smallest wage gaps between men and women. The aim of this paper is to extend wage discrimination analysis in Galicia through two complementary theories. First, we approximate global discrimination with the Oaxaca decomposition. This method calculates the discrimination using women and men median characteristics, providing a measure based on the wage distribution average. After that, considering individual discrimination experiences, we approximate wage discrimination by using indicators based on poverty literature, as the Generalised Lorenz Inverse (discrimination curve), and the family of indexes such as Foster´s, Greer´s or Thorbecke´s. These indexes have the property of decomposability, which allows to do an exhaustive analysis of the wage discrimination distribution in Galicia that can be the source of the differential behaviour observed at the aggregate level.

A Comparative Analysis of the Evolution of Gender Wage Discrimination: Spain Versus Galicia

The aim of this paper is to analyze the degree of female wage discrimination in the Spanish region of Galicia relative to the rest of Spain. The analysis starts from an established fact: women's average earnings are lower than men's. First, we try to show the causes behind this wage differential. Next, we discuss the evolution of the wage gap between 1995 and 2002, in order to bring some light on the factors potentially accounting for wage discrimination persistence in Galicia and Spain. We will analyze the distribution of the degree of discrimination using Discrimination Curve and Discrimination Indexes proposed by Del Río et al. These indicators have the advantage of being decomposable, allowing a more exhaustive rendering of the factors characterizing wage discrimination, as well as the quantification of the incidence of discrimination for different social groups. Thus we can determine, not only if the degree of discrimination has had a similar evolution in both regions, but also if discrimination is more strongly exerted against the same social groups both in Galicia and Spain

Gender wage discrimination in Galicia

The wage discrimination by gender in the Galician region is one of the highest in Spain, although it presents one of the smallest wage gaps between men and women. The aim of this paper is to extend wage discrimination analysis in Galicia through two complementary theories. First, we approximate global discrimination with the Oaxaca decomposition. This method calculates the discrimination using women and men median characteristics, providing a measure based on the wage distribution average. After that, considering individual discrimination experiences, we approximate wage discrimination by using indicators based on poverty literature, as the Generalised Lorenz Inverse (discrimination curve), and the family of indexes such as Foster's, Greer's or Thorbecke's. These indexes have the property of decomposability, which allows to do an exhaustive analysis of the wage discrimination distribution in Galicia that can be the source of the differential behaviour observed at the aggregate level

Temporary Employment in Tourism Activities: Regional differences in Spain

The great capacity of tourism to provide employment, especially between groups of workers with a more difficult insertion in the labour market, is one of its most well-known positive aspects. However Tourism employment is often described as low skilled, which is associated with average lower wages, higher percentage of fixed-term contracts, and longer working day than other industries. Nevertheless, this is not true for all tourism activities. Although this description could be close for hotels and restaurants labour market, it is completely different for land transport, travel agencies and tour operators activities. This could be related with the fact that each characteristic tourism industry provides a different percentage of his output to tourists, as it is shown in the Spanish Tourism Satellite Account. Given that, the aim of this paper is to analyse what factors can determine the incidence of temporary employment in Tourism activities in Spain and to discuss regional differences. As result, our first step is to identify the labour market characteristics of the different tourism activities. These results are clear influenced by the particularities of the different activities (labour market of transport activities is very different from hotels and restaurants activities) and not by a tourism characteristic. Thus, the second step is to analyse how tourism influence in the labour-market conditions after controlling for the particularities of the different tourism activities. In this case, we focus in just one characteristic of the labour market very associated with low-quality jobs; the share of workers with fixed-term jobs. Although Spain is one of the countries with the highest arrivals of tourists, those are not equally distributed by regions. This allows us to identify the degree of specialization of each region in tourism, and to analyse its impact in the share of workers with fixed-term contracts. Results show that the highest tourism specialization of the region decreases the share of workers with fixed-term contracts, after isolating the particularities of the different tourism activities. It seems that this low-quality characteristic disappear with the development of the sector in some regions.

Earnings returns to education, experience and health: Evidence from EU-SILC

Using individual-level panel data from European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (2007-2010) we explore to what extend wage differentials across European countries are explained by differences in education, actual experience and health. The human capital literature suggests an important role for these variables in explaining wage patterns. However, while there is a wide support in the empirical literature of the positive impacts of education and experience on wages, the relationship between wages and health is less clear-cut. What makes it most difficult to disentangle these effects is that education, experience, health and wages are interrelated. To deal with these issues, we implement an Efficient Generalized Instrumental Variable estimator. This procedure allows simultaneous control for the correlation between regressors and unobserved individual effects (as fixed effects) and to identify the estimates for the time-invariant covariates, such as education, as a random effects estimator. Furthermore, it eliminates the uncertainty associated with the choice of instruments, since exogenous included variables, and their means over time, are used as efficient instruments. Our preliminary results suggest that taking this possible unobserved heterogeneity in education and experience into account does not significantly affect the estimation results. Instead, correcting for possible unobserved heterogeneity and/or measurement error in SRH status changes the estimation results dramatically. Still, we find that for both men and women in Europe education, actual experience and health have positive impacts on wages

Could gender wage discrimination explain regional differences in productivity?

Human capital and productive structure could account for an important part of the differences in productivity between Spanish regions; nevertheless we consider that gender wage discrimination could also have effects on it. The existence of a degree of discrimination means that there is a wage differential in which employer prefer to hire less productive workers instead of discriminated workers. Thus, the cost of producing a unit of product would be higher than the cost of producing without discrimination, i.e. discrimination could has effects on productivity. Based on Becker (1957) we develop a maximization problem with discrimination using an aggregate production function with constant elasticity of substitution (CES). As a result, we get a productivity function depending on discrimination and other traditional factors such as wages or production. Our results show that the discrimination growth hast a negative and significant effect on productivity for the Spanish regions

Macroeconomic consequences of gender discrimination: a preliminary approach

Although the degree of gender wage discrimination has been estimated many times, its effects on the economy have not been too much studied, neither theoretically nor empirically. Consequently, in this paper we attempt to cover the existent void in this topic. First, we establish a theoretically framework of the macroeconomic consequences of gender discrimination and second, we attempt to check these results empirically. The existence of a degree of discrimination means that there is a wage differential in which employer prefer to hire less productive workers instead of discriminated workers. Thus, on one hand, the employment level of discriminated workers would be lower than the neoclassic equilibrium. On the other hand, the cost of producing a unit of product would be higher than the cost of producing without discrimination. As a result, both the product by worker (productivity) and the female employment rate (discriminated group) would be lower. If we aggregate these microeconomic effects we should obtain macroeconomic effects in both productivity and employment. In order to check these effects of discrimination we analyse the correlation in the growth of discrimination and the variables possibly affected: productivity and employment. Using data of gender discrimination for Spanish regions we found a negative and significant relationship between discrimination and productivity. Effects on employment are more difficult to see since the growth of the degree of gender wage discrimination causes a change in the allocation of resources. Thus, we find the effect in the female employment rate relative to men and we do not find it in the female employment rate

Temporary Employment in Tourism Activities: Regional differences in Spain

The great capacity of tourism to provide employment, especially between groups of workers with a more difficult insertion in the labour market, is one of its most well-known positive aspects. However Tourism employment is often described as low skilled, which is associated with average lower wages, higher percentage of fixed-term contracts, and longer working day than other industries. Nevertheless, this is not true for all tourism activities. Although this description could be close for hotels and restaurants labour market, it is completely different for land transport, travel agencies and tour operators activities. This could be related with the fact that each characteristic tourism industry provides a different percentage of his output to tourists, as it is shown in the Spanish Tourism Satellite Account. Given that, the aim of this paper is to analyse what factors can determine the incidence of temporary employment in Tourism activities in Spain and to discuss regional differences. As result, our first step is to identify the labour market characteristics of the different tourism activities. These results are clear influenced by the particularities of the different activities (labour market of transport activities is very different from hotels and restaurants activities) and not by a tourism characteristic. Thus, the second step is to analyse how tourism influence in the labour-market conditions after controlling for the particularities of the different tourism activities. In this case, we focus in just one characteristic of the labour market very associated with low-quality jobs; the share of workers with fixed-term jobs. Although Spain is one of the countries with the highest arrivals of tourists, those are not equally distributed by regions. This allows us to identify the degree of specialization of each region in tourism, and to analyse its impact in the share of workers with fixed-term contracts. Results show that the highest tourism specialization of the region decreases the share of workers with fixed-term contracts, after isolating the particularities of the different tourism activities. It seems that this low-quality characteristic disappear with the development of the sector in some regions

A regional analysis of Tourism Specialization in Spain

Tourism sector is playing an important role in the development of a region, contributing to the economy growth and job creation. Despite of the actual crisis, Tourism activities continues to growth in the last year (UNWTO 2011). Also, Spain maintains in the better positions of the world ranking. Furthermore, Tourism activities generate around 10% of GPD and represents 11.5% of total workers of the Spanish Economy. Nevertheless, this is not true for all the Spanish Regions. There are regional differences in the number of tourist arrivals, level and quality of employment, number of open Hotels, amenities, etc. Consequently, it is necessary to concentrate on tourism phenomenon and its economic measurement. The main purpose of this paper is to analyses the tourism specialization in the Spanish Provinces. In general previous literature supports the idea that tourism enhances economic growth (Neves & Maças 2008). Tourism specialization has a positive and significant effect in different areas of our economies, for example, GPD, labour conditions, educational level?For that reason, it is essential to review the previous literature and clarify which indicators are the best ones to measure tourism specialization. Could tourism specialization make a difference in the regional economy? In order to study the tourism specialization, we focus on demand and supply side variables for tourism sector. Such factors may concern the quality and the capability of a destination to attract visitors. Moreover, we have included amenities variables referred to natural places, recreational sites and climate. We developed a cluster analysis to try do differentiate the tourism specialization. It is essential to understand the relationship between tourism characteristics, amenities and its economic impacts for public policies and tourism managing