A Demand-Supply Analysis of the Spanish Education Wage Premium in the 1980s and 1990s.

We estimate the demand for education in Spain, and use the estimated demand curve to analyze whether the evolution of the education wage premium in the 1980s and 1990s can be explained by a demand-supply framework. We find that growth in the demand for education in the 1980s was very similar to growth in the 1990s. Our empirical results show that difference in the evolution of the education wage premium between the two decades can be explained by combining observed changes in labor supply with steady labor demand growth.wage premium, relative demand, relative supply

Wage Inequality in Spain, 1980-2000

We use recent developments in quantile regression to simulate counterfactuals densities that allows to decompose the Spanish wage inequality evolution over the 1980-2000 period between changes due to observable prices, labour market composition and non observable characteristics' prices. Our empirical results are threefold: first of all, the wage inequality decreases during each decade first half and increases during the second ones, second both changes in prices and composition has an important role in this evolution and third, changes in observable prices mirrors this behavior above and below the median while non observable inequality increases since 1985 onwards below the median, with an erratic trend above. Finally some tentative explanations are give that could reasonably explain our findings.Wage inequality, counterfactuals, human capital.