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.

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

Get Book Here

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.

Skill-biased Technical Change and Wage Inequality

Skill-biased Technical Change and Wage Inequality PDF Author: Anya Petra Hageman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Skilled labor
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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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.

The Endogenous Skill Bias of Technical Change and Inequality in Developing Countries

The Endogenous Skill Bias of Technical Change and Inequality in Developing Countries PDF Author: Mr.Alberto Behar
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 147553695X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 31

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Book Description
This paper draws on existing empirical literature and an original theoretical model to argue that globalization and skill supply affect the extent to which technology adoption in developing countries favors skilled workers. Developing countries are experiencing technical change that is skill-biased because skill-biased technologies are becoming relatively cheaper. Increased skill supply further biases technical change in favor of skilled labor. Free trade induces technology that favors skilled workers in skill-abundant developing countries and that favors unskilled workers in skill-scarce developing countries, and therefore amplifies the predicted wage effects of trade liberalization. These features aid our understanding of the observed rises in inequality within developing countries and the absence of a significant downward effect of expanded educational attainment on skill premia. They also help account for the large and differential effects of trade liberalization on inequality. These findings are pertinent for the Middle East and North Africa because of its recent increase in trade openness and remarkable rise in educational attainment.

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.

Technical Change, Inequality, and the Labor Market

Technical Change, Inequality, and the Labor Market PDF Author: Daron Acemoglu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Labor market
Languages : en
Pages : 75

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Book Description
This essay discusses the effect of technical change on wage inequality. I argue that the behavior of wages and returns to schooling indicates that technical change has been skill-biased during the past sixty years. Furthermore, the recent increase in inequality is most likely due to an acceleration in skill bias. In contrast to twentieth century developments, most technical change during the nineteenth century appears to be skill-replacing. I suggest that this is because the increased supply of unskilled workers in the English cities made the introduction of these technologies profitable. On the other hand, the twentieth-century has been characterized by skill-biased technical change because the rapid increase in the supply of skilled workers has induced the development of skill-complementary technologies. The recent acceleration in skill bias is in turn likely to have been a response to the acceleration in the supply of skills during the past several decades.

Skill Biased Technological Change and Rising Wage Inequality

Skill Biased Technological Change and Rising Wage Inequality PDF Author: David Edward Card
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Skilled labor
Languages : en
Pages : 49

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Book Description
The rise in wage inequality in the U.S. labor market during the 1980s is usually attributed to skill-biased technical change (SBTC), associated with the development of personal computers and related information technologies. We review the evidence in favor of this hypothesis, focusing on the implications of SBTC for economy-wide trends in wage inequality, and for the evolution of wage differentials between various groups. A fundamental problem for the SBTC hypothesis is that wage inequality stabilized in the 1990s, despite continuing advances in computer technology. SBTC also fails to explain the closing of the gender gap, the stability of the racial wage gap, and the dramatic rise in education-related wage gaps for younger versus older workers. We conclude that the SBTC hypothesis is not very helpful in understanding the myriad shifts in the structure of wages that have occurred over the past three decades

Handbook of Labor Economics

Handbook of Labor Economics PDF Author: Orley Ashenfelter
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 9780444501899
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 800

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Book Description
A guide to the continually evolving field of labour economics.

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.

Handbook of Economic Growth

Handbook of Economic Growth PDF Author: Philippe Aghion
Publisher: Newnes
ISBN: 0444535470
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 1172

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Book Description
Volumes 2A and 2B of The Handbook of Economic Growth summarize recent advances in theoretical and empirical work while offering new perspectives on a range of growth mechanisms, from the roles played by institutions and organizations to the ways factors beyond capital accumulation and technological change can affect growth. Written by research leaders, the chapters summarize and evaluate recent advances while explaining where further research might be profitable. With analyses that are provocative and controversial because they are so directly relevant to public policy and private decision-making, these two volumes uphold the standard for excellence in applied economics set by Volumes 1A and 1B (2005). Offers definitive theoretical and empirical scholarship about growth economics Empowers readers to evaluate the work of other economists and to plan their own research projects Demonstrates the value of empirical testing, with its implicit conclusion that our understanding of economic growth will help everyone make better decisions