摘要：This paper presents an overview of the changes in wage inequality in industrialized countries. The paper first presents a number of stylized facts about the evolution of wage inequality in Canada, the United States, and the large European economies. A key pattern that comes out of the data is that the growth in inequality has been concentrated in the upper-end of the wage distribution in recent years. Several explanations ranging from the introduction of information and communication technologies to labour market institutions are considered as possible explanations for these changes. The paper concludes that the growth in inequality cannot be accounted for by a single causal explanation such as technological change. A more promising approach for explaining the changes in wage inequality in industrialized countries is rather based on a number of causal factors coming from the demand and the institutional side of the labour market.
