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This paper examines the relationship between the gender wage gap and occupational gender segregation in Sweden. The results show that the gender wage gap varies substantially across occupations. It is small in male-dominated occupations and relatively large in female-dominated occupations. Further, as much as 30% of the overall gender wage gap in Sweden can be attributed to occupational segregation by gender. Finally, the return to work experience for women is substantially higher in male-dominated occupations than in female-dominated occupations, suggesting that the cost for work interruptions are lower in female-dominated occupations than in male-dominated occupations. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that women choose occupations in which the penalty for work interruptions is low. Thus, occupational segregation may arise because of gender differences in preferences for occupational characteristics and not necessarily because of discriminatory practices by employers.

Since smartphones became ubiquitous, online grocery and food purchases through take-away delivery platforms have steadily increased in China. Nevertheless, whether the development of take-away delivery can ameliorate urban–rural wage inequality still requires further analysis. The purpose of this paper is to clarify whether this positive effect exists.

This paper makes estimations based on city and individual levels combining the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) 2008, CHIP 2013, CHIP2018 survey data and the take-away delivery site data. At the city level, the Oaxaca-Blinder (O-B) decomposition method is employed to construct wage inequality index of urban and rural labors. At the individual level, this paper analyzes urban–rural wage differentials with high or low formal education level.

The rapid establishment of take-away delivery sites has resulted in an increase of 52.425 yuan on average in the annual wage of rural labors with low formal education level. When the cumulative number of sites increases by 1 unit, the annual wage inequality index decreases by 0.007 on average. Labors with the characteristics of rural household registration and low education can enjoy more dividends. Through inter-/within-industry decomposition, this paper elaborates formal education, age and cross-industry transfer as the main factors for the improvement of urban–rural wage inequality. Narrowing effect of wage differences between different groups in multiple sample slices also contributes to the mechanism analyses.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first to analyze the impact of take-away delivery development on the urban–rural wage inequality from the perspective of the establishment of take-away delivery sites. This empirical study will enrich the existing theoretical perspectives on urban–rural divide under the emergence of new forms of employment. The results indicate that new forms of employment represented by take-away delivery can not only promote economic growth, but also eliminate urban–rural inequality.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the gender wage gap (GWG) in Spain adopting a labour market segmentation approach. Once we obtain the different labour segments (or idiosyncratic labour markets), we are able to decompose the GWG into its observed and unobserved heterogeneity components.

We use the data from the Continuous Sample of Working Lives for the year 2021 (matched employer–employee [EE] data). Contingency tables and clustering techniques are applied to employment data to identify idiosyncratic labour markets where men and/or women of different ages tend to match/associate with different sectors of activity and occupation groups. Once this “heatmap” of labour associations is known, we can analyse its hottest areas (the idiosyncratic labour markets) from the perspective of wage discrimination by gender (Oaxaca-Blinder model).

In Spain, in general, men are paid more than women, and this is not always justified by their respective attributes. Among our results, the fact stands out that women tend to move to those idiosyncratic markets (biclusters) where the GWG (in favour of men) is smaller.

It has not been possible to obtain remuneration data by job-placement, but an annual EE relationship is used. Future research should attempt to analyse the GWG across the wage distribution in the different idiosyncratic markets.

Our combination of methodologies can be adapted to other economies and variables and provides detailed information on the labour-matching process and gender wage discrimination in segmented labour markets.

Our contribution is very important for labour market policies, trying to reduce unfair inequalities.

The study of the GWG from a novel labour segmentation perspective can be interesting for other researchers, institutions and policy makers.

The purpose of this paper is to verify whether higher education increases the likelihood of young Italian workers moving from non‐standard to standard wage contracts.

The authors exploit a data set on labour market flows, produced by the Italian National Statistical Office, by interviewing about 85,000 graduate and non‐graduate individuals aged 15‐29 in transition between five labour market states: standard wage employment; non‐standard wage employment; self‐employment; unemployment; inactivity. From these data, an average six‐year transition matrix was constructed whose coefficients can be interpreted as probabilities of moving from one state to another over time.

As the authors find evidence for the so‐called stepping stone hypothesis (that is, a higher probability of moving to a permanent job for individuals starting from a temporary job), the authors expect graduates to be more likely to pass from non‐standard to standard wage contracts than non‐graduates, because the signalling effect of education is enhanced by the stepping stone effect of non‐standard wage contracts. Nevertheless, the authors find that non‐standard wage contracts of graduates are more likely to be terminated as bad job/worker matches.

This paper adds to the empirical literature on the probability of young workers moving from non‐standard wage contracts to a permanent job. By separating graduates from non‐graduates, it was found that education reduces the likelihood of passing from non‐standard to standard wage contracts. The authors interpret this result as evidence of the changing labour market that makes it more difficult to infer the productivity of graduates as opposed to non‐graduates.

This study explores the impact of import competition on wages and employment at the industry level. We estimate reduced‐form, industry‐level wage and employment equations. We find that, in a majority of industries, a toughening of import competition tends to reduce employment and to have an adverse effect on workers’ wages, but the magnitude of this impact is relatively modest. Our results suggest that import price variations have had very little influence on the domestic labour market.

In the last decade there has been considerable interest in the analysis of Trade Union behaviour, but surprisingly little discussion of the effect of tax changes on wage demands. Previous analyses have been limited by the use of simple tax structures. The discussion is extended by considering a multi‐rate tax system that can easily be applied to most countries. The effect on unions′ wage demands of eliminating the top marginal tax rate, while raising VAT, is examined in detail. It is shown that this policy can be expected to lead to an increase in the wage demands of all unions, producing a once‐and‐for‐all increase in nominal wages and unemployment.

The aim of this study is to empirically investigate the effect of real wages on labour productivity in Malaysia's manufacturing sector using annual data from 1980 to 2009.

This study uses the Johansen cointegration test to examine the presence of long‐run equilibrium relationship between labour productivity and real wages in Malaysia. In addition, the Granger causality test within the vector error‐correction model (VECM) is used to ascertain the direction of causality between the variables of interest.

The Johansen test suggests that real wages and labour productivity are cointegrated. Moreover, labour productivity and real wages have a quadratic relationship (i.e. inverted U‐shaped curve) instead of linear relationship. Hence, the effect of real wages on labour productivity is non‐monotonic. Furthermore, the Granger causality test indicates that real wages and labour productivity are bilateral causality in nature.

This study is limited to the labour productivity in the manufacturing sector only.

This study demonstrates that the effect of real wages on labour productivity is non‐monotonic; hence increase in real wages alone does not always enhance labour productivity. Thus, other incentives should be offered to stimulate long‐term labour productivity growth in Malaysia.

This article considers the impact of minimum wage legislation on wages, employment and gross domestic product. Using the Liverpool quarterly model of the UK to calculate the total effects in the economy, the authors suggest that unemployment would increase along with the real wages of low paid workers.