TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Bütikofer, Aline
AU  - Loken, Katrine Vellesen
AU  - Willén, Alexander
        TI  - Building Bridges and Widening Gaps: Wage Gains and Equity Concerns of Labor Market Expansions
        PY  - 2020/Jan/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 12885
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp12885
        AB  - We exploit the construction of the Öresund bridge, which connects a medium-sized city in Sweden to the capital of Denmark, to study the labor market effects of gaining access to a larger labor market. Using unique cross-country matched registry data that allow us to follow individuals across the border, we find that the bridge led to a substantial increase in cross-country commuting among Swedish residents. This effect is driven both by extensive and intensive margin employment responses, and translates into a 15% increase in the average wage of Swedish residents. 
However, the wage effects are unevenly distributed: the effect is largest for high-educated men and smallest for low-educated women. Thus, the wage gains come at the cost of increased income inequality and a widening of the gender wage gap, both within- and across-households. We show that these inequality effects are driven not only by differences in the propensity to commute, but also by educational specialization. 
        KW  - distributional consequences
KW  - wages
KW  - labor market expansions
        ER  -