산업간 임금격차의 결정요인과 정책적 시사점

Inter-industry wage differential in Korea

The goal in this paper is to find the available evidence on the inter-industry wage differentials and to suggest the elements in explanation of the differentials. This paper approaches two ways; the first is the supply side which is characterized by observed or unobserved human capitals and the second is demand side which is characterized by the industry own attributes. As the first approach, human capital earning functions are estimated using cross-sectional data from the survey report on wage structure. The finding is that the dispersion in wage across industries as measured by standard deviation in industry wage differentials is substantial. Furthermore, these differentials are very difficult to link to unobserved difference in ability or to compensating differentials for working conditions. Therefore, this paper tests whether the remaining differentials after controlling for the observed or unobserved human capital reflect the industry own attributes. The major finding is that the productivity, capital intensity and the market sharing can explain the differentials, but very little. The conclusion is that the human capital approach and the industry attribute approach are considered in policy making for the wage structure.