Does the Sector Bias of Skill-biased Technical Change Explain Changing Wage Inequality?

Does the Sector Bias of Skill-biased Technical Change Explain Changing Wage Inequality? PDF Author: Jonathan Haskel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 56

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Book Description
This paper examines whether the sector bias of skill-biased technical change (sbtc) explains changing skill premia within countries in recent decades. First, using a two-factor, two-sector, two-country model we demonstrate that in many cases it is the sector bias of sbtc that determines sbtc's effect on relative factor prices, not its factor bias. Thus, rising (falling) skill premia are caused by more extensive sbtc in skill-intensive (unskill-intensive) sectors. Second, we test the sector-bias hypothesis using industry data for many countries in recent decades. An initial consistency check strongly supports the hypothesis. Among ten countries we find a strong correlation between changes in skill premia and the sector bias of sbtc during the 1970s and 1980s. The hypothesis is also strongly supported by more structural estimation on U.S. and U.K. data of the economy-wide wage changes mandated' to maintain zero profits in all sectors in response to the sector bias of sbtc. The suggestive mandated-wage estimates match the direction of actual wage changes in both countries during both the 1970s and the 1980s. Thus, the empirical evidence strongly suggests that the sector bias of sbtc can help explain changing skill premia.

Does the Sector Bias of Skill-biased Technical Change Explain Changing Wage Inequality?

Does the Sector Bias of Skill-biased Technical Change Explain Changing Wage Inequality? PDF Author: Jonathan Haskel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 56

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Book Description
This paper examines whether the sector bias of skill-biased technical change (sbtc) explains changing skill premia within countries in recent decades. First, using a two-factor, two-sector, two-country model we demonstrate that in many cases it is the sector bias of sbtc that determines sbtc's effect on relative factor prices, not its factor bias. Thus, rising (falling) skill premia are caused by more extensive sbtc in skill-intensive (unskill-intensive) sectors. Second, we test the sector-bias hypothesis using industry data for many countries in recent decades. An initial consistency check strongly supports the hypothesis. Among ten countries we find a strong correlation between changes in skill premia and the sector bias of sbtc during the 1970s and 1980s. The hypothesis is also strongly supported by more structural estimation on U.S. and U.K. data of the economy-wide wage changes mandated' to maintain zero profits in all sectors in response to the sector bias of sbtc. The suggestive mandated-wage estimates match the direction of actual wage changes in both countries during both the 1970s and the 1980s. Thus, the empirical evidence strongly suggests that the sector bias of sbtc can help explain changing skill premia.

Implications of Skill-biased Technological Change

Implications of Skill-biased Technological Change PDF Author: Eli Berman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cambio tecnologico
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description
Demand for less skilled workers decreased dramatically in the US and in other developed countries over the past two decades. We argue that pervasive skill-biased technological change rather than increased trade with the developing world is the principal culprit. The pervasiveness of this technological change is important for two reasons. First, it is an immediate and testable implication of technological change. Second, under standard assumptions, the more pervasive the skill-biased technological change the greater the increase in the embodied supply of less skilled workers and the greater the depressing effect on their relative wages through world goods prices. In contrast, in the Heckscher-Ohlin model with small open economies, the skill-bias of local technological changes does not affect wages. Thus, pervasiveness deals with a major criticism of skill-biased technological change as a cause. Testing the implications of pervasive, skill-biased technological change we find strong supporting evidence. First, across the OECD, most industries have increased the proportion of skilled workers employed despite rising or stable relative wages. Second, increases in demand for skills were concentrated in the same manufacturing industries in different developed countries.

Inequality and the Labor Market

Inequality and the Labor Market PDF Author: Sharon Block
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815738811
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Exploring a new agenda to improve outcomes for American workers As the United States continues to struggle with the impact of the devastating COVID-19 recession, policymakers have an opportunity to redress the competition problems in our labor markets. Making the right policy choices, however, requires a deep understanding of long-term, multidimensional problems. That will be solved only by looking to the failures and unrealized opportunities in anti-trust and labor law. For decades, competition in the U.S. labor market has declined, with the result that American workers have experienced slow wage growth and diminishing job quality. While sluggish productivity growth, rising globalization, and declining union representation are traditionally cited as factors for this historic imbalance in economic power, weak competition in the labor market is increasingly being recognized as a factor as well. This book by noted experts frames the legal and economic consequences of this imbalance and presents a series of urgently needed reforms of both labor and anti-trust laws to improve outcomes for American workers. These include higher wages, safer workplaces, increased ability to report labor violations, greater mobility, more opportunities for workers to build power, and overall better labor protections. Inequality in the Labor Market will interest anyone who cares about building a progressive economic agenda or who has a marked interest in labor policy. It also will appeal to anyone hoping to influence or anticipate the much-needed progressive agenda for the United States. The book's unusual scope provides prescriptions that, as Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz notes in the introduction, map a path for rebalancing power, not just in our economy but in our democracy.

Does the Sector Bias of Skill-biased Technical Change Explain Changing Wage Inequality?

Does the Sector Bias of Skill-biased Technical Change Explain Changing Wage Inequality? PDF Author: Jonathan Haskel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 58

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Book Description
This paper examines whether the sector bias of skill-biased technical change (sbtc) explains changing skill premia within countries in recent decades. First, using a two-factor, two-sector, two-country model we demonstrate that in many cases it is the sector bias of sbtc that determines sbtc's effect on relative factor prices, not its factor bias. Thus, rising (falling) skill premia are caused by more extensive sbtc in skill-intensive (unskill-intensive) sectors. Second, we test the sector-bias hypothesis using industry data for many countries in recent decades. An initial consistency check strongly supports the hypothesis. Among ten countries we find a strong correlation between changes in skill premia and the sector bias of sbtc during the 1970s and 1980s. The hypothesis is also strongly supported by more structural estimation on U.S. and U.K. data of the economy-wide wage changes mandated' to maintain zero profits in all sectors in response to the sector bias of sbtc. The suggestive mandated-wage estimates match the direction of actual wage changes in both countries during both the 1970s and the 1980s. Thus, the empirical evidence strongly suggests that the sector bias of sbtc can help explain changing skill premia.

Offshoring and Wage Inequality in the UK, 1992-2004

Offshoring and Wage Inequality in the UK, 1992-2004 PDF Author:
Publisher: "la Caixa"
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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Book Description


What Explains the Widening Wage Gap: Outsourcing vs. Technology

What Explains the Widening Wage Gap: Outsourcing vs. Technology PDF Author:
Publisher: "la Caixa"
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 55

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Book Description


The Race between Education and Technology

The Race between Education and Technology PDF Author: Claudia Goldin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674037731
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
This book provides a careful historical analysis of the co-evolution of educational attainment and the wage structure in the United States through the twentieth century. The authors propose that the twentieth century was not only the American Century but also the Human Capital Century. That is, the American educational system is what made America the richest nation in the world. Its educational system had always been less elite than that of most European nations. By 1900 the U.S. had begun to educate its masses at the secondary level, not just in the primary schools that had remarkable success in the nineteenth century. The book argues that technological change, education, and inequality have been involved in a kind of race. During the first eight decades of the twentieth century, the increase of educated workers was higher than the demand for them. This had the effect of boosting income for most people and lowering inequality. However, the reverse has been true since about 1980. This educational slowdown was accompanied by rising inequality. The authors discuss the complex reasons for this, and what might be done to ameliorate it.

A New Social Question?

A New Social Question? PDF Author: Ive Marx
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
ISBN: 9053569251
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Social scientists, politicians, and economists have recently been taken with the idea that the advanced welfare states of Europe face a “New Social Question.” The core idea is that the transition from an industrial to a postindustrial environment has brought with it a whole new set of social risks, constraints, and trade-offs, which necessitate radical recalibration of social security systems. A New Social Question? analyzes that question in depth, with particular attention to the problem of income protection and the difficulties facing Bismarckian welfare states. It will be necessary reading for anyone interested in understanding the future of European social policy.

Handbook of Labor Economics

Handbook of Labor Economics PDF Author: Orley Ashenfelter
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0080544185
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 930

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Book Description
Modern labor economics has continued to grow and develop since the first volumes of this Handbook were published. The subject matter of labor economics continues to have at its core an attempt to systematically find empirical analyses that are consistent with a systematic and parsimonious theoretical understanding of the diverse phenomenon that make up the labor market. As before, many of these analyses are provocative and controversial because they are so directly relevant to both public policy and private decision making. In many ways the modern development in the field of labor economics continues to set the standards for the best work in applied economics.This volume of the Handbook has a notable representation of authors - and topics of importance - from throughout the world.

The Changing Distribution of Earnings in OECD Countries

The Changing Distribution of Earnings in OECD Countries PDF Author: A B Atkinson
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191538558
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 506

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Book Description
This book is about how much people earn and why the distribution of earnings has been changing over time. The gap between the top and bottom in the United States has widened significantly since 1980. Why has this happened? Is it due to new technologies? What is the role of globalisation? Are there historical precedents? The book begins with the "race" between technology and education, and shows that continuing technical progress does not necessarily imply a continuing rise in dispersion. It then examines the experience of 20 OECD countries over the twentieth century, material presented in the form of 20 country case studies. The book breaks new ground in assembling data on the distribution of individual earnings covering much of the twentieth century and drawing on a variety of under-exploited sources. The findings overturn a number of widely-held beliefs. It is not the earnings of the low paid that have been most affected by the recent changes; widening is largely due to what is happening at the top. The recent rise in earnings dispersion is not unprecedented, but should be seen as part of a longer-run history of successive compression and expansion of earnings differences.