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.

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.

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.

The Employment Effects of Technological Change

The Employment Effects of Technological Change PDF Author: Jens Rubart
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3540699554
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
The labor markets of important OECD countries show a similar picture: high wages and low unemployment for skilled workers and low wages but high unemployment for low-skilled workers. During the last 10 years this fact has been studied under the hypothesis of "skill-biased technological change" within the context of endogenous growth models. Recent research, however, has shown that the employment and wage differentials vary at business cycle frequencies.This book provides an empirical and theoretical examination of the short- and medium run impacts of technological advances on the employment and wages of workers which differ in their earned educational degree. Furthermore, by introducing labor market frictions and wage setting institutions the author shows the importance of such imperfections in order to replicate empirical facts. Due to the introduction of employment protection mechanisms and minimum wages the analysis accounts for key facts of continental European labor markets.

Technological Change and Labor Markets

Technological Change and Labor Markets PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781003389965
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"In developed countries like the US, Germany and the UK it has been observed that workers who perform non-routine activities, either cognitive or manual, have benefited in terms of employment and income, while those performing routinary tasks have seen their job prospects and wages decline. This has led to a polarization of the labor markets and to a decrease in certain measures of inequality. This phenomenon has been attributed to task-biased technological change (TBTC), which differs from the skilled biased technological change in the fact that not only highly skilled workers have benefited from technology advancement. This book presents evidence of how digitalization and task-biased technological change are affecting the labor markets of different regions of the world and examines the factors that cause this inequality among nations. It examines recent issues around the effect of task-biased technological change on labor markets and the economy in general, with a comparison of different countries in Central and Eastern Europe, North America, and Latin America, as well as in other regions of the world. The incorporation of the abovementioned regions presents relevant particularities for the subject matter addressed in the book. The book also considers questions such as how labor market effects differ by gender and what the impact of digital skills on employment, inequalities and public policies might be. In so doing, it identifies the advances, opportunities, and changes that have taken place, while also making public policy proposals. The main market for the book is the global community of graduate students and researchers in the field of economics and, specifically, in the study of labor markets"--

Innovation and Inequality

Innovation and Inequality PDF Author: Gilles Saint-Paul
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140082477X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Karl Marx predicted a world in which technical innovation would increasingly devalue and impoverish workers, but other economists thought the opposite, that it would lead to increased wages and living standards--and the economists were right. Yet in the last three decades, the market economy has been jeopardized by a worrying phenomenon: a rise in wage inequality that has left a substantial portion of the workforce worse off despite the continuing productivity growth enjoyed by the economy. Innovation and Inequality examines why. Studies have firmly established a link between this worrying trend and technical change, in particular the rise of new information technologies. In Innovation and Inequality, Gilles Saint-Paul provides a synthetic theoretical analysis of the most important mechanisms by which technical progress and innovation affect the distribution of income. He discusses the conditions under which skill-biased technical change may reduce the wages of the least skilled, and how improvements in information technology allow "superstars" to increase the scale of their activity at the expense of less talented workers. He shows how the structure of demand changes as the economy becomes wealthier, in ways that may potentially harm the poorest segments of the workforce and economy. An essential text for graduate students and an indispensable resource for researchers, Innovation and Inequality reveals how different categories of workers gain or lose from innovation, and how that gain or loss crucially depends on the nature of the innovation.

Technology, Growth, and the Labor Market

Technology, Growth, and the Labor Market PDF Author: Donna K. Ginther
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461503256
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Technology, Growth, and the Labor Market brings together research by economists from academia and the Federal Reserve System. The first section of the volume includes discussions by monetary policymakers with firsthand experience in determining how technology affects productivity, inequality, and macroeconomic growth. Papers in the second section discuss the sources of the surge in labor productivity growth during the latter half of the 1990s and present forecasts of labor productivity growth rates during the next few years. In the third section, the papers focus on the role of technological advances in changes in earnings inequality in the labor market. The authors examine whether inequality should be viewed as a causal result of skill-biased technological change or whether there is a missing link - or perhaps no link - between changes in technology and changes in wage inequality. The final section explores the relationships between computer investment, worker skills, human resource practices, and productivity at the industry and firm levels.

Inequality, Economic Growth, and Technological Change

Inequality, Economic Growth, and Technological Change PDF Author: Volker Grossmann
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642575943
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
The book examines the relationship between inequality, growth and technological progress. It provides a broad overview of the existing literature and introduces specific, innovative aspects about the impact of inequality and redistribution on growth when growth is driven by human or physical capital investments, as well as the impact of technological progress and accumulation on the distribution of earnings. There is a special focus on the role of social comparison, redistributive taxation and new information technologies for the relationship between inequality and growth. The analytical part of the book mainly consists of endogenous growth models.

What¿s Driving Wage Inequality

What¿s Driving Wage Inequality PDF Author: Aaron Steelman
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 1437904971
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 17

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Book Description
Wage inequality has increased sharply in the U.S. since the mid-1970s. While some have argued that globalization -- in particular, increased international trade and immigration -- is primarily responsible for changes in the wage distribution, the authors argue that the main cause is skill-biased technical change. Workers with relatively high skill levels have experienced more rapid growth in wages than less-skilled workers, some of whom have seen an actual decline in their real wages. Although technical change likely has increased wage inequality, it also has greatly enhanced productivity and thus living standards in the U.S.

Differences and Changes in Wage Structures

Differences and Changes in Wage Structures PDF Author: Richard B. Freeman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226261840
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
During the past two decades, wages of skilled workers in the United States rose while those of unskilled workers fell; less-educated young men in particular have suffered unprecedented losses in real earnings. These twelve original essays explore whether this trend is unique to the United States or is part of a general growth in inequality in advanced countries. Focusing on labor market institutions and the supply and demand forces that affect wages, the papers compare patterns of earnings inequality and pay differentials in the United States, Australia, Korea, Japan, Western Europe, and the changing economies of Eastern Europe. Cross-country studies examine issues such as managerial compensation, gender differences in earnings, and the relationship of pay to regional unemployment. From this rich store of data, the contributors attribute changes in relative wages and unemployment among countries both to differences in labor market institutions and training and education systems, and to long-term shifts in supply and demand for skilled workers. These shifts are driven in part by skill-biased technological change and the growing internationalization of advanced industrial economies.

Trends in Wage Inequality

Trends in Wage Inequality PDF Author: Anton Tchipev
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description