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The article proposes a novel multidimensional operationalization of precarious employment using the Alkire-Foster dual threshold counting approach methodology. The proposal is made in a context in which, although precarious employment tends to be considered a multidimensional construct characterized by an accumulation of unfavourable features of employment quality, there is neither a standard and generally accepted definition nor operationalization of the phenomenon in the literature. The proposed methodology has the advantages that it can be easily applied to the usual content of most labour surveys, and that it allows an analysis of both the scale and the nature of precariousness. The illustrative evidence obtained for Spain reveals both a high incidence of multidimensional precariousness (affecting almost 40% of wage earners) and a high intensity (multidimensional precarious wage earners suffer from around 3 job deprivations). Moreover, it shows that employment precariousness is highly persistent over time and tends to grow over time and that there is great heterogeneity in the scope of the phenomenon according to its individual incidence and among different groups of workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines regional differences in the gender wage gap in Spain using matched employer-employee microdata, two different econometric decomposition methods and panel data techniques. Our findings suggest that Spain shows a significant regional heterogeneity in the size of the raw gap, roughly comparable to cross-country differences observed in the European context. The results from the decomposition analysis show that although the bulk of the gender wage gap in Spanish regions is due to differences in the endowments of productive characteristics between males and females there is still a substantial part of the gap that remains unexplained. The analysis of the causes behind the variation of both, the raw and the unexplained gender wage gap by region highlights that several economic, institutional and demographic elements identified in previous studies analysing international differences in the gender wage gap are also relevant to explain regional differences in the gender wage gap in Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]