We analyse occupational change over the last two decades in Britain, Germany, Spain and Switzerland: which jobs have been expanding-high-paid jobs, lowpaid jobs or both? Based on individual-level data, four hypotheses are examined: skill-biased technical change, routinization, skill supply evolution and wagesetting institutions. We find massive occupational upgrading which matches educational expansion: employment expanded most at the top of the occupational hierarchy, among managers and professionals. In parallel, intermediary occupations (clerks and production workers) declined relative to those at the bottom (interpersonal service workers). This U-shaped pattern of upgrading is consistent with the routinization hypothesis: technology seems a better substitute for average-paid clerical and manufacturing jobs than for low-end interpersonal service jobs. Yet country differences in low-paid services suggest that wage-setting institutions channel technological change into more or less polarized patterns of upgrading. Moreover, immigration surges in Britain and Spain seem decisive in having provided the low-skilled labour supply necessary to fill low-paid jobs.

Estudios previos sobre la vida en los centros penitenciarios españoles han tendido a hablar de ‘la’ prisión como una institución con condiciones de encarcelamiento uniformes. Sin embargo, la literatura internacional sugiere que la privación de libertad puede experimentarse de forma muy distinta según el centro penitenciario donde se cumpla condena. Esta investigación analiza si existen distintos tipos de prisión en España, a qué factores son debidas dichas diferencias, cuáles son más relevantes y cuáles son sus implicaciones. Con esta finalidad, hemos administrado el cuestionario Measuring Quality of Prison Life a quinientos presos en cuatro centros penitenciarios de Barcelona. Los resultados de nuestro estudio muestran que la calidad de vida difiere significativamente entre las prisiones analizadas. Estas diferencias, que conllevan importantes consecuencias para las personas presas, no obedecen en exclusiva al historial del interno, sino también, o sobre todo, a la organización del centro y al sistema de relaciones interpersonales existente.

Correspondence studies are popular tools for assessing discrimination against minorities, for example, in the labor market. Typically, two fake Curriculum Vitae (CVs) are sent to multiple job openings. The CVs are equivalent except for a mark identifying the disadvantaged. While it is straightforward to establish discrimination from minorities’ lower response rates, it is often unclear what its source may be. Discrimination may result as much from employers’ aversion toward a minority, as from perceptions that members have lower or more dispersed abilities that are unstandardizable in a CV. We refine existing methodologies to propose a wider-scope method capable of disentangling these three sources of discrimination and establish its face validity applying it to a correspondence study aimed at assessing labor market discrimination against ex-convicts in a local market.

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