SCALE-INDEPENDENT TECHNOLOGICAL-KNOWLEDGE BIAS, HUMAN-CAPITAL ACCUMULATION AND GENDER INEQUALITY Oscar Afonso* Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Porto, CEFUP, OBEGEF and NIFIP (December 2011; revised June 2012) ABSTRACT We present a dynamic, non-scale general-equilibrium model with female and male human capital where Schumpeterian R&D and human-capital accumulation are the engines of growth and gender wage inequality. Gender wage inequality is encouraged by changes in relative supply and relative demand of both human-capital types. Relative supply restricts the levels of employed human capital. Relative demand is affected by the technological-knowledge bias, which is driven by the price channel and is affected by human-capital accumulation. In particular, the female-premium per unit of human capital and per worker increases when the observed discrimination against women decreases or is removed. 1. INTRODUCTION By studying the impact of recent changes in favor of a better equality between men and women, this paper aims to analyze the main driving forces behind the wage-inequality gender gap. Acemoglu (1998), for example, stressed the importance of analyzing this topic, but not many studies have dealt with it. Although the size of the wage-inequality gender gap varies across coun- tries, many developed countries have seen a narrowing of the gap over the last decades; women of all ages and education levels have obtained pay gains relative to their male counterparts (e.g. Bound and Johnson, 1992; Waldfo- gel, 1998; Card and DiNardo, 2002; Autor et al., 2008; Bryan and Martinez, 2008). However, there still exists a relevant gap. Women and men differ in terms of the jobs in which they work, which, in turn, affects their relative wages. In fact, some Goods and Services (G&S) are * The author would like to thank two anonymous Referees of this journal for their constructive suggestions on previous versions of this paper. Metroeconomica 1–27 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-999X.2012.04168.x © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd