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AbstractThis article addresses an important question in the age of rapid spread of new computer technologies: how do institutions influence the computer wage premium? To identify institutional factors that account for differences in computers' impact on wages, the authors estimate computer wage premiums for 20 countries classified into three national 'varieties' of capitalism and distinct forms of industrial relations and education systems. The analyses are based on unique international data from the Survey of Adult Skills, recently conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Results reveal that computer use at work is rewarded considerably higher in Liberal countries than in other countries—Nordic Coordinated countries above all. These results signify the centrality of coordinated markets, grounded in strong unions, centralized wage bargaining and publicly funded education and training, for lower computer wage gaps, hence for lower levels of wage inequality.

"Many inequality scholars view skill-biased technological change - the computerization of workplaces that favours high-skilled workers - as the main cause of rising wage inequality in America, while institutional factors are generally relegated to a secondary role. The evidence presented in this article, however, does not support this widely held view. Using direct measures for computers and pay-setting institutions at the industry level, this article provides the first rigorous analysis of the independent effect of technological and institutional factors on rising wage inequality. Analysing data on 43 US industries between 1968 and 2012, we find that declining unions and the fall in the real value of the minimum wage explain about half of rising inequality, while computerization explains about one-quarter. This suggests that much of rising inequality in the USA is driven by worker disempowerment rather than by market forces - a finding that can resolve the puzzle on the diverging inequality trends in USA and Europe." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

"Many inequality scholars view skill-biased technological change - the computerization of workplaces that favours high-skilled workers - as the main cause of rising wage inequality in America, while institutional factors are generally relegated to a secondary role. The evidence presented in this article, however, does not support this widely held view. Using direct measures for computers and pay-setting institutions at the industry level, this article provides the first rigorous analysis of the independent effect of technological and institutional factors on rising wage inequality. Analysing data on 43 US industries between 1968 and 2012, we find that declining unions and the fall in the real value of the minimum wage explain about half of rising inequality, while computerization explains about one-quarter. This suggests that much of rising inequality in the USA is driven by worker disempowerment rather than by market forces - a finding that can resolve the puzzle on the diverging inequality trends in USA and Europe." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku).

This article exploits the unique consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak to examine whether time constraints drive the unequal division of unpaid labor between dual-earner couples in Israel. Using the first wave of longitudinal household data that was collected in Israel since the outbreak of the pandemic, we focused on 325 dual-earner couples who stayed employed during the first lockdown. By employing OLS regressions, we examined the association between changes in employment hours and changes in unpaid labor for partnered men and women. Strong evidence was found for a gendered translation of the time constraints mechanism: A decrease in hours of paid work is related to an increase in hours of care for children among men and women, but time devoted to housework increased only among women. We conclude that time constraints that resulted from the dramatic effect of the first lockdown on paid and unpaid work in Israel did not significantly change the gender division of unpaid housework but did change the distribution of childcare. The theoretical implications of this conclusion for future research are discussed.