A mandatory stop in each conference season is our very own WIEM , the Warsaw International Economic Meeting. This year conference had two distinguished keynotes: Nick Hanley, who presented his research on natural capital and determinants of (very) long run growth with data that traces back to the times of the Industrial Revolution, and the Nobel Prize winner James Heckman, who inaugurated the conference with details of his most recent work in the topic of intergenerational mobility. 

Besides these great presentations, WIEM was an opportunity to discuss research with friends and colleagues, including our own research. In particular, Lucas (ok, it is me but I refer to myself in third person) presented an earlier draft of what will become the PhD dissertation. The research digs into the issue of within occupation wage inequality and its relation with the task content of occupations. It explores to hypotheses: that task dispersion leads to greater wage inequality and that more routine tasks, in which workers are better substitutes for each other, is related to a lower level of income inequality. The preliminary results provide support for the second hypothesis, while evidence supporting first one is much weaker. Some future avenues of research were suggested, including an in-depth analysis of the mechanisms behind this hypotheses.