Aggregate Earnings Inequality in Europe: Permanent Differences or Transitory Fluctuations?

This paper examines the relationship between aggregate inequality and its underlying components for a number of European countries. We use a well established GMM approach to separate the permanent component from the transitory component of earnings inequality. Our results show that three quarters of the observed cross-country differences in aggregate inequality in Europe is accounted for by differences in permanent inequality, reflecting differences in individual characteristics that persist throughout the life-cycle