This article examines the occupational mobility of immigrants between their countries of origin and Spain on the basis of one of the few surveys available internationally with longitudinal information on immigrant employment in home and host countries. The evidence shows that the occupational status of immigrants in the Spanish labour market is, in general, substantially worse than in their countries of origin. The severe loss of occupational status experienced by immigrants is explained by the combined effect of the intense initial downgrading they experience when entering the Spanish labour market and their very slow occupational progress during their stay in Spain. These findings are more in line with the segmented assimilation theory, which suggests a limited or blocked immigrant occupational mobility, than with the assimilation theory, which predicts a U-shaped evolution in the occupational status of immigrants between their home and host countries. As a result, the Spanish case contrasts sharply with previous evidence for other advanced countries, which tends to support the assimilation perspective. Finally, the empirical evidence suggests that one of the elements impeding the occupational mobility of immigrants in Spain is the significant size of the secondary segment of the labour market, which restricts immigrants' opportunities mainly to low-status occupations.

This article carries out an empirical examination of the origin of the differences between immigrant and native-born wage structures in the Spanish labour market. Especial attention is given in the analysis to the role played by occupational and workplace segregation of immigrants. Legal immigrants from developing countries exhibit lower mean wages and a more compressed wage structure than native-born workers. By contrast, immigrants from developed countries display higher mean wages and a more dispersed wage structure. The main empirical finding is that the disparities in the wage distributions for the native-born and both groups of immigrants are largely explained by their different observed characteristics, with a particularly important influence in this context of workplace and, particularly, occupational segregation.

This article analyses the importance of labour market institutions and, in particular, collective wage bargaining in shaping regional wage differences in the Spanish labour market. Using microdata from the Spanish Structure of Earnings Survey, our results reveal that there are significant inter-regional wage differences for similarly skilled workers. These differences are present throughout the whole wage structure and can be explained by both competitive and noncompetitive factors, such as an insufficient competition in product markets. In this context, industry-level collective bargaining plays a major role in accounting for regional wage differences, a role that in the Spanish case is enhanced due to its unusual regional dimension.Keywords: Wage structure; regional wage differences; collective bargaining. JEL codes: J31, J50.RESUMEN: Este trabajo analiza la importancia de las instituciones del mercado de trabajo y, en particular, el sistema de negociación colectiva en la explicación de las diferencias salariales regionales en el mercado de trabajo español. Los resultados obtenidos a partir de información microeconómica de la Encuesta de Estructura Salarial muestran la existencia de apreciables diferencias salariales entre las regiones españolas para trabajadores con habilidades productivas observadas similares. Estas diferencias salariales están presentes a lo largo de toda la estructura salarial y se explican por factores competitivos y por factores no competitivos, como la insuficiente competencia en el mercado de productos. En este contexto, la negociación colectiva sectorial es en gran medida la responsable de la diferenciación salarial entre territorios, lo que resulta facilitado por la vertiente territorial que caracteriza al sistema español de negociación colectiva Palabras clave: Estructura salarial, diferencias salariales regionales, negociación colectiva.

Abstract:The objective of this paper is to analyse the influence of individual variables and some spatial mobility characteristics of regional labour markets on overeducation in Spain. To achieve this aim, we use microdata from the Spanish Budget Household Survey to estimate a probit model for the probability of overeducation while accounting for sample selection and the presence of data at different levels (individuals and territory). The obtained results permit us to conclude that the sizes of local labour markets and the possibility of extending the job search to other labour markets by commuting are relevant factors in explaining overeducation in the Spanish labour market. In spite of differences in labour market institutions, our results are very similar to those obtained for other countries, particularly when working with more recent data.

The objective of this article is to analyse the role played by the different components of human capital in the wage determination of immigrants in the Spanish labour market. Using microdata from the Encuesta Nacional de Inmigrantes, we find that human capital of immigrants acquired in Spain presents higher returns than human capital obtained in home countries, reflecting the limited international transferability of the latter. This result is reinforced by the strong heterogeneity observed in wage returns to different kinds of human capital across immigrants from different origins and, in particular, by the fact that immigrants with the higher returns to human capital acquired in their home countries are those coming from other developed countries and Latin America, the two regions more similar to Spain in terms of development and/or culture.JEL classification codes: J15, J24, J31, J61.

SummaryThe article examines public-private sector wage differentials in Spain using microdata from the Structure of Earnings Survey (Encuesta de Estructura Salarial). When applying various decomposition techniques, we find that it is important to distinguish by gender and type of contract. Our results also highlight the presence of a positive wage premium for public sector workers that can be partially explained by their better endowment of characteristics, in particular by the characteristics of the establishment where they work. The wage premium is greater for female and fixed-term employees and falls across the wage distribution, being negative for more highly skilled workers.

Abstract:Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine wage differences between part-and full-time workers distinguishing by gender by using a large Spanish matched employer-employee data set and an econometric decomposition that permits to decompose wage differences by quantiles of the wage distribution.Design/methodology/approach: The research is based on cross-section matched employer-employee microdata from a large representative survey (the Encuesta de Estructura Salarial) which is carried out with a harmonised methodology common to all European Union member countries and that has been designed specifically to provide reliable evidence about characteristics of the wage distribution such us wage differentials associated with the type of working time. From a methodological point of view, the econometric decomposition technique proposed recently by Fortin et al. (2011) to decompose wage differences between part-time and full-time workers by quantiles of the wage distribution is applied. This methodology has the advantage over similar techniques that provides a detailed decomposition of wage differentials and has not been used before to examine the wage impact of part-time jobs. Findings:The results show that the significant raw wage gap that part-time workers experience in Spain differs substantially along the wage distribution. In the case of part-time females, the wage disadvantage is mostly explained by their relative endowments of characteristics (and particularly by their lower endowments of human capital and their segregation into low-wage sectors) but a significant wage penalty still persists, increasing along the wage distribution. In the case of males the wage disadvantage is only found in the lower part of the distribution and it is due both to their worst endowments of characteristics and a significant wage penalty. Research limitations/implications:The evidence for Spain shows that the part-time work tends to affect differently to the wages of males and females, with a higher part-time penalty for males, as predicted by the "flexibility stigma" hypothesis, and penalising low-qualified men in the lower part of the wage distribution and highqualified women in the upper part of the distribution the most. Originality/value:The analysis contributes to the literature by examining wage differences along the wage distribution for both genders using econometric decomposition methods, an aspect that to the authors' knowledge has been examined only scarcely in the international literature with non-conclusive evidence and has not been examined in previous studies for the Spanish case. In this vein, Spain is a particularly interesting analysis case from an international perspective of the wage consequences of part-time jobs, given that in contrast with most other advanced countries a majority of part-time employment in this country is involuntary and this phenomenon is especially affecting disadvantaged groups.

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