Human capital and wages in the Spanish hospitality sector: a regional analysis

The aim of this paper is to analyze the return on human capital in Spanish hospitality industry through an adapted Mincerian wage equation, and verify and measure the wage gap in the main Spanish touristic regions using the Oaxaca-Ransom methodology and data from Spanish Wage Structure Survey 2006. The hospitality sector in the regions analyzed have lower values in all variables on human capital compared to its other private services, existing large differences in the returns on human capital obtained in each one of them. These wage differentials are justified largely by the different employee characteristics, although in the Canary Islands and Madrid are motivated by different returns on observed variables.