City size, employer concentration, and wage income inequality - Ratio

City size, employer concentration, and wage income inequality - Ratio

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Ratio Working Paper No. 374: The Impact of High-Skilled Migration on Productivity in Swedish Firms

Publication year

2024

Published in

Ratio Working paper series.

Abstract

The migration of highly skilled labor has received increasing attention due to its role in fostering innovation and productivity. This study explores the impact of foreign experts on the productivity of Swedish companies. Utilizing a difference-in-difference model with comprehensive register data from 1996 to 2015, the analysis reveals that Swedish companies hiring foreign experts experience a significant productivity increase of 6 to 11 percent within two to three years post-hiring. This effect is particularly pronounced in small and medium-sized enterprises and is slightly enhanced when excluding returning Swedish-born experts. Additionally, the study finds that both labor and capital productivity rise, along with a modest increase in wage incomes for other employees, estimated at 1.5 to 2 percent. However, the wage effects are less robust compared to productivity impacts. The findings underscore the importance of attracting foreign talent to bolster productivity. This research fills a crucial gap in the literature by focusing on the specific effects of foreign experts on total factor productivity in a small, knowledge-oriented economy like Sweden’s.

Article (with peer review)

Do gender norms travel within corporations? The impact of foreign subsidiaries on the home country’s gender wage gap

Halvarsson, D., Lark, O., Tingvall, P. G., Vahter, P., & Videnord, J.

Publication year

2024

Published in

Applied Economics Letters, 1-5.

Abstract

In this note we study how the share of workers in a corporation located in a high gender wage gap country impacts the wage gap in their home country operations. Our findings support the hypothesis that firms with strong intra-firm linkages to a high gender wage gap country also display a relatively large gender wage gap at home.

Ratio Working Paper No 363: City Size, Employer Concentration, and Wage Income Inequality

Korpi, M., & Halvarsson, D.

Publication year

2023

Published in

Rati Working Paper Series.

Abstract

In this paper, we build upon a monopsony framework, suggested by Card et. al. 2016, which links firm level productivity and rent-sharing to wage inequality. Specifically, our research questions address i) to which extent labor market concentration across firms (within different types of locally situated industries) affects variation in wages among workers within these firms and industries, and ii) how this variation in turn spills over into economy-wide inequality (measured at the level of local labor markets). Using linked employer-employee full population data for Sweden, and an AKM modelling framework to separate between worker- and firm-level heterogeneity, our results suggest that higher firm-level fixed effects (a measure of rent-sharing) is associated with lower labor market employer concentration, something which affects average wage income among firms accordingly. Addressing wage income inequality by applying our model to different segments of the local labor market income distribution, we find that reduced average employer concentration in larger cities accounts for almost all variation in the (positive) link between city size-and wage inequality, except for the largest metropolises where it captures around 30-50 percent of variation depending on the income segment that we focus on.