Question

Suppose a drop in the compensating wage differential between risky jobs and safe jobs has been observed. Two explanations have been put forward: • Engineering advances have made it less costly to create a safe working environment. • The phenomenal success of a new reality show Die on the Job! has imbued millions of viewers with a romantic perception of work-related fatal risks. Using demand and supply diagrams of risky jobs, show how each of the two developments can explain the drop in the compensating wage differential. Can information on the number of workers employed in the risky occupation help determine which explanation is more plausible?

Answer 1

Answer and Explanation:

As shown in the question above, the advancement of engineering has allowed it to be cheaper for a company to promote a safe environment for professionals than to pay a higher salary for the risk they run within the work environment. This causes companies to modify the offer of risky jobs, as a way of reducing expenses. However, due to wage compensation, the demand for these jobs remains high, because professionals are attracted to compensation. To stop this demand, companies promote a compensation differential, which modifies the demand curve by decreasing it, which means that fewer people will look for these jobs.