finally a decomposition exercise shows that composition effects are able to explain a very limited amount of the observed crosscountry differences in wage inequality this suggests that economic institutions by shaping the way personal characteristics are rewarded in the labour market are the main determinants of wage inequality aprfes la presentation de statistiques descriptives sur le degre de dispersion des distributions des niveaux de competence et des revenus le document montre que la correlation internationale entre ces deux dimensions d inegalite est ties faible et le cas echeant negative