Essays on Skill Biased Technological Change and Human Capital
Essays on Skill Biased Technological Change and Human Capital

Author: Qian Lu

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13:

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This dissertation studies determinants of the U.S. labor market structure and human capital development, with a focus on technological change. A key feature of the U.S. labor market since 1980 is the substantial growth of the employment in high skill occupations and there is a substantial literature attributing this change to technological change. However, since 1999, the employment growth of high skill occupations has decelerated markedly despite continued rapid growth in technology. The first essay documents this novel trend and examines the role of technological change in explaining this phenomenon. It shows that technological advancements since the late 1990s, such as the onset of Internet, have expanded what computers can do and become substitutes for high skill occupations. This change can explain a substantial portion of the stagnancy in employment growth for high skill occupation in the 2000s. The second essay examines the role of computer adoption in explaining the differences in the change of gender wage gap between 1980 and 2000 across cities in the United States. It uses the city-level routine task intensity in 1980 to predict the subsequent increase in computer adoption and shows that cities with one percent greater increase in computer adoption experienced a 0.7 percent more decrease in the change of male-female wage ratio between 1980 and 2000. Computerization explains about 50 percent of the decline in the male-female wage gap between 1980 and 2000. The third essay studies the causal effect of maternal education on the gender gap in children's non-cognitive skills. It shows that maternal education reduces boys' disadvantage in non-cognitive behaviors relative to girls at age 7. To explain the mechanism of this effect, it provides suggestive evidence that better educated mothers spend more time going outings with boys while reading to girls at age 7, and going outings could be more closely related to non-cognitive development than reading.

Essays in Innovation, Technology Diffusion and Globalisation
Essays in Innovation, Technology Diffusion and Globalisation

Author: Anthony Swan

Publisher:

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13:

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I explore the implications of an increasingly integrated world economy on production patterns, levels of innovation activity and technology diffusion, and welfare across countries in a series of three essays. First, I analyse the gains from openness to international trade and multinational production (MP) across countries in a general equilibrium framework where innovation activity and technology are endogenously determined. The gains from openness to trade and MP implied by the calibrated model are in general much larger than the gains previously reported in the literature, reflecting productivity gains from inward MP, additional profits to multinationals and their affiliates around the world from outward MP, and the benefits of specialisation across production and research activities. Second, I examine the role of international trade in spreading the benefits of technology embodied in machinery and equipment around the world and the contribution of different country characteristics that promote or inhibit these benefits. The results explain why the International Comparison Program's data on equipment prices tend not to fall with levels of development across countries. Third, I examine the empirical relevance of Rybczynski effects, skills biased technical change, and increased global production sharing in explaining Israel's adjustment to immigration of Russian Jews in the 1990s. My findings provide new evidence that all three mechanisms played an important role in Israel's adjustment. The conclusions of this thesis suggest that the gains from participating in a global economy are potentially large but depend in large part on the extent to which the benefits of technology are spread around the world, which in turn depends on geography and other country characteristics. -- provided by Candidate.

Two Essays on Technology Diffusion
Two Essays on Technology Diffusion

Author: Qiangbing Chen

Publisher:

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 98

ISBN-13: 9781109898798

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This thesis includes two essays. Essay 1 analyzes the diffusion process of a cost-reducing technology innovation within an industry. Two factors generate the diffusion. The first factor is the gently declining production cost with the innovation, which makes technology adoption more profitable for firms with the passage of time. The other factor is the cost of technology adoption, which tends to retard adoption. The model explains multiple stylized facts and important observations in technology diffusion, which include (1) the S-shaped diffusion path, (2) the slowness in diffusion process, (3) permanent rejection of an innovation, (4) unprofitable technology adoption and, (5) the significant difference in diffusion rate across innovations.

Inequality and the Labor Market
Inequality and the Labor Market

Author: Sharon Block

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2021-04-06

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 0815738811

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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.

Four Essays on Technology Adoption and Returns to Skill in the U.S.
Four Essays on Technology Adoption and Returns to Skill in the U.S.

Author: Moohoun Song

Publisher:

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13:

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We investigate two plausible factors that may have affected changes in wage inequality: returns to higher education and returns to new technologies. The first two chapters examine the role of mathematics and verbal ability in estimating returns to advanced degrees. When average abilities within the major are treated as missing variables, we found that OLS estimates of returns to graduate education are underestimated. When average ability in the major is treated as part of an endogenous decision regarding whether to attend post-graduate degree programs, we find that students in majors with higher average mathematics skills are less likely to progress beyond the bachelor's degree while the opposite happens with average verbal skills. The next two chapters examine the decision of whether to adopt Internet and computer technologies and the returns to adoption. We first identify demand-side and supply-side factors that affect technology adoption in urban and rural areas. Local access to high speed Internet plays an important role in the technology adoption decision. It increases the probability of using computers and the Internet for work from home and also increases the likelihood of using the Internet at work. That factor alone explains about half of the gap in Internet adoption at home or at work between urban and rural workers. Together, the demand and supply-side factors identified in the analysis completely explain the differences in technology adoption between urban and rural areas. Using the previous model to identify the endogenous probability of adopting various information technologies, we estimate returns to adoption in the context of an earnings function. When treated as exogenous, adoption has an implausibly large positive and significant effect on earnings. When the endogeneity of the choice to adopt is controlled, the estimated returns to adoption shrink in both sign and significance. Thus, while adoption is strongly tied to the availability of high-speed Internet in the home county, the higher income of adopters is due to factors that raise both the probability of adoption and earnings and not to the adoption per se.

Technology Diffusion and Its Effects on Social Inequalities
Technology Diffusion and Its Effects on Social Inequalities

Author: Manuela Magalhães

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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We develop a dynamic general-equilibrium framework in which growth is driven by skill-biased technology diffusion. The model incorporates leisure-labor decisions and human capital accumulation through education. We are able to reproduce the trends in income inequality and labor and skills supplies observed in the United States between 1969 and 1996. The paper also provides an explanation for why more individuals invest in human capital when the investment premium is going down, and why the skill-premium goes up when the skills supply is increasing.