This paper compares the changing skill structure of wage bills and employment in the United States with six other OECD countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, and the United Kingdom). We investigate whether a directly observed measure of technical change (R&D intensity) is closely linked to the growth in the importance of more highly skilled workers which has occurred in all countries. Evidence of a significant association between skill upgrading and R&D intensity is uncovered in all seven countries. These results provide evidence that skill-biased technical change is an international phenomenon that has had a clear effect of increasing the relative demand for skilled workers.

This paper uses microeconomic data from the U.K. Family Expenditure Surveys (FES) and the General Household Surveys (GHS) to describe and explain changes in the distribution of male wages. Since the late 1970s wage inequality has risen very fast in the U.K., and this rise is characterized both by increasing education and age differentials. We show that a large part of the changes in the U.K. can be summarized quite simply as increases in eduction differentials and a decline of growth of entry level wages which persist subsequently. This fact we interpret as cohort effects. We also show that, like in the U.S., an important aspect of rising wage inequality is increased within-group wage dispersion. Finally we use the GHS to evaluate the role of alternative education measures.