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⁹ Although disposable income inequality is an outcome whose connection to policy would also be interesting to analyze, this article presents the analysis of a topic (wage inequality) that has been the focus of an extensive literature in comparative political economy (see, for example, fn. 8). It is also the case that the availability of disposable income data is more limited than the wage inequality variable used in this article, which reduces the range of claims that can be tested with these data.

¹⁰ OECD, Income Distribution in OECD Countries: Evidence from the Luxembourg Income Study (Paris: OECD, 1995)Google Scholar; Gottschalk and Smeeding (fn. 5); Wallerstein (fn. 8).

¹¹ Pontusson, Rueda, and Way (fn. 8)

¹² See Thomas Cusack, “Partisan Politics and Public Finance,” Public Choice 91, no. 3/4 (1997). Higher values of Cusack's index signify more conservative government.

¹³ I use a similar methodological setup and the same control variables as those used by Pontusson, Rueda, and Way (fn. 8).

¹⁴ I ran the regressions without a constant.

¹⁵ The periods are 1973–79, 1980–84, 1985–89, and 1991–95. The excluded reference year is 1990.

¹⁶ The average level of earnings replacement provided by public unemployment insurance during the first year of unemployment. For more details, see OECD, “Unemployment and Related Benefits,” in The OECD Jobs Study: Evidence and Explanations (Paris: OECD, 1994)Google Scholar, pt. 2, chap. 8.

¹⁷ The prerequisites for unemployment benefits differ substantially in OECD nations. As a consequence, there is great variation in terms of the percentage of unemployed people receiving benefits. See, for example, Blondal, Sveinbjorn and Pearson, Mark, “Unemployment and Other Non-Employment Benefits,” Oxford Review of Economic Policy 11, no. 1 (1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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²² Cusack (fn. 12), 375.

²³ See, for example, Blais, André, Blake, Donald, and Dion, Stephane, Governments, Parties, and Public Sector Employees (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Knutsen, Oddbjørn, “Social Class, Sector Employment, and Gender as Party Cleavages in the Scandinavian Countries,” Scandinavian Political Studies 24, no. 4 (2001)Google Scholar.

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²⁴ Ibid., 417

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³⁶ Since low-paid labor includes both insiders and outsiders, the expectations of the traditional and bsider-outsider models are the same here.

³⁷ For an explanation, see Dolado, Juan, Kramarz, Francis, Machin, Stephen, Manning, Alan, Margolis, David, Teulings, Coen, Saint-Paul, Gilles, and Keen, Michael, “The Economic Impact of Minimum Wages in Europe,” Economic Policy 11, no. 23 (1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁴² See Appendix 1 for details and sources for all variables used in this article.

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⁴⁵ Party manifestos data can be criticized for being a reflection of what parties say to win elections and not necessarily of what they will do once they have won them. For an analysis arguing that there is a correlation between party platforms and policy in the American case, see Budge, Ian and Hofferbert, Richard, “Mandates and Policy Outputs,” American Political Science Review 84, no. 1 (1990)Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ For a more detailed explanation of this argument, see Gabel, Matthew and Huber, John, “Putting Parties in Their Place,” American Journal of Political Science 44, no. 1 (2000)Google Scholar.

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⁴⁸ The original index ranges from left (-100) to right (+100); I have inverted it to facilitate the interpretation of the results with regards to the hypotheses presented in Figure 1.

⁴⁹ Gabel and Huber (fn. 46). The measure I use is in fact very highly correlated with Cusack's (fn. 12) more commonly used cabinet partisanship variable (with is based in expert opinions).

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⁵⁶ As with other ratios, the use of this measure introduces the question of whether the causes (or the effects) that are observed are related to a change in the minimum wage or to a change in the average wage.

⁵⁷ Dolado et al. (fn. 37).

⁵⁸ For a more detailed explanation, see Dolado et al. (fn. 37); and OECD (fn. 38).

⁵⁹ See Appendix 1 for details.

⁶⁰ The countries are Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.K., and the U.S. In the regressions for the determinants of government employment and welfare state generosity, data are missing ; for Australia (1992–95), Switzerland (1973 and 1974), and Belgium (1995, but only for the government employment regression). In the regressions for the determinants of minimum wages data for Switzerland are missing. Finally, the lack of availability of OECD inequality data imposes more limitations in our analysis of the determinants of 50–10 ratios. In these regressions data for Switzerland are again missing (since minimum wages are now an explanatory variable), as well as for the year 1995 (for all countries), Australia (1973–75), Belgium (1973–84), Canada (1974–80), Denmark (1973–79), Finland (1973–76), Germany (1973–83), Italy (1973–85), Japan (1973 and 1974), the Netherlands (1973–76), Norway (1973–89, 1994, and 1995), and Sweden (1972–74).

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⁶² The periods are 1973–79, 1980–84, 1985–89, and 1991–95. The excluded reference year is 1990.

⁶³ These analyses on inequality include linearly interpolated data for a few missing observations in the wage series. I did not interpolate across gaps of more than three years, and interpolated observations account for only 13 out of those used in the analyses (the N is 226 in these regressions).

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⁶⁸ Garrett (fn. 40).

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⁷⁸ The same increase in a country with high corporatism would promote a similar although less substantial decrease in inequality, but, as mentioned above, left government is not associated with more government employment in these countries.

⁷⁹ It is important to point out, however, that this is not an ideal measure of welfare state generosity for testing an insider-outsider argument. The variable capturing social transfers in this analysis is too aggregate and it includes portions (like old-age benefits) that would mostly benefit insiders.

⁸⁰ Results available from the author.

⁸¹ It could be argued that governments influence the minimum wage even if they do not set a statutory level and that they can influence the wage demands of social partners. The analysis above is reproduced with a dependent variable reflecting minimum wages (whether statutory or the result of collective bargaining) as a percentage of average wages. They confirm the results discussed in this section.

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⁸³ Results available from author.

⁸⁴ Results available from author.

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