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.
Global health is a rapidly emerging discipline with a transformative potential for public policy and international development. Emphasizing transnational health issues, global health aims to improve health and achieve health equity for all people worldwide. Its multidisciplinary scope includes contributions from many disciplines within and beyond the health sciences, including clinical medicine, public health, social and behavioral sciences, environmental sciences, economics, public policy, law and ethics. This large reference offers up-to-date information and expertise across all aspects of global health and helps readers to achieve a truly multidisciplinary understanding of the topics, trends as well as the clinical, socioeconomic and environmental drivers impacting global health. As a fully comprehensive, state-of-the-art and continuously updated, living reference, the Handbook of Global Health is an important, dynamic resource to provide context for global health clinical care, organizational decision-making, and overall public policy on many levels. Health workers, physicians, economists, environmental and social scientists, trainees and medical students as well as professionals and practitioners will find this handbook of great value.
"This book discusses theoretical aspects of gender issues in ICT and presents a number of case studies from various countries, covering topics such as social networking, ICT use among women, the digital divide, and theoretical approaches to gender gaps and ICT"--Provided by publisher.
The Economic Impact of Digital Technologies offers a profoundly illuminating examination of ICT transformations in Europe and its critical role in greater social inequality. It presents scholars and policy makers with original and practical tools to benchmark and assess the ICT diffusion and inclusion process. The core message of book is that a coherent European strategy for embedding ICT technologies in society is long overdue. Social differences in ICT use persist and are in some cases widening, yet despite this fact there is a dearth of research on remedying digital inequalities. This is of particular importance given that relative levels of ICT use, investment and research can often explain variations in economic performance between industrialised countries. The purpose of this book is to fill the gap in the literature by presenting key evidence on the economic benefits (and costs) deriving from investment in an inclusive information society. The authors propose indicators and indexes of digital development and e-Inclusion (and its flip-side e-exclusion) to assess the relationship between inclusive ICT and wider economic and social performance in Europe. Presenting the methodology to monitor countries' performance and ICT use, together with original measures and policy suggestions, this book will be indispensable to policymakers, scholars and postgraduate students in a variety of areas including economic growth, innovation, industrial and organizational studies, information and technology, European studies, and public and social policy.
My thesis is a collection of three essays that consider various aspects of a skillbiased technology diffusion as well as skill premium, human capital acumulation and redistributive policies. The first chapter, co-authored with Christian Hellström, investigates the effects of skill-bisead technology change (SBTC) on income inequality and skills supply in the last 30 years in the US. In spite of the intensive debate about the effects of SBTC, its general equilibrium effects on the accumulation of skills and labor supply have been neglected. Thus, we build a dynamic general equilibrium model, in which growth is driven by skill-biased technology diffusion. Households have forward-looking expectations, and differ in terms of innate and idiosyncratic acquisition of skills. Contrary to pure technology progress models, technology diffusion models provide an explanation for the slowdown of the skill premium in the 70s compatible with the slow productivity growth. We find that first, technology diffusion raises the demand for skills and, consequently, the supply of skills. Second, skill-biased technology diffusion explains both the slowdown and the sharp increase of the skill premium observed in the 70s and 80s, respectively. In spite of the slowdown of the skill premium in the 70s, households anticipate the speed up of the technology diffusion and raise their investment in education, even during the economic slowdown. Therefore, the skills supply has continually increased since the 70s. Through a calibration exercise, we replicate the US trends for the skill-premium, skills supply, unskilled wages, consumption inequality and labor supply. The second chapter is motivated by the finding that the skill-biased technology diffusion increases both the skill-premium and skills supply in the last 30 years in the US . This chapter analyzes the effectiveness of redistributive policies in periods of technology diffusion. We build a microfounded general equilibrium model with skill-biased technology diffusion, endogenous labor supply, schooling decisions and redistributive policies. We show that, under endogenous schooling decisions, lump-sum transfers are ineffective. This policy raises the skill premium, in particular during the economic boom and in the long run, and reduces the social welfare during almost all of the technology cycle. Yet education subsidies incentivize the investment in education, decreasing the skill premium, raising the skills supply and social welfare. The investment in education tends to be counter-cyclical. On the one hand, forward-looking individuals anticipate the increase of demand for skills during the economic boom, increasing their investment in education during the economic recession. On the other hand, they also anticipate the maturation of the technology diffusion, reducing their investment in education during the economic boom. Finally, we show that education subsidies are Pareto-effcient, increasing welfare of both high- and low-skilled individuals. The third chapter endogenizes the technology diffusion path assumed in the first chapter. This chapter presents a two-sector growth model that explains the adoption of a skill-biased technology. There are two types of technology: low-tech and high-tech, and the latter is more productive and skill-biased. Technology is not embodied. To adopt high-technology, users must pay an instantaneous adoption cost, which decreases over time due to technology progress. Firms are homogeneous and act strategically, maximizing their profits given their rivals' behavior, leading to a technology sequential adoption pattern due to stock effects. We found that the decrease of the adoption cost and the increase of the technology knowledge due to learning effects leads to an increasing technology diffusion over time. The former has an constant effect over time, but for the latter, although positive, the effect is not constant, changing the speed of the technology diffusion over time.
Addressing the big questions about how technological change is transforming economies and societies Rapid technological change—likely to accelerate as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic—is reshaping economies and how they grow. But change also causes disruption, creates winners and losers, and produces social stress. This book examines the challenges of digital transformation and suggests how creative policies can make it more productive and inclusive. Shifting Paradigms is the second book on technological change produced by a joint research project of the Brookings Institution and the Korea Development Institute. Contributors are experts from the United States, Europe, and Korea. The first volume, Growth in a Time of Change, was published by Brookings in February 2020. The book's underlying thesis is that the future is arriving faster than expected. Long-accepted paradigms about economic growth are changing as digital technologies transform markets and nearly every aspect of business and work. Change will only intensify with advances in artificial intelligence and other innovations. Investors, business leaders, workers, and public officials face many questions. Is rising market concentration inevitable with the new technologies or can their benefits be more widely shared? How can the promise of FinTech be captured while managing risks? Should workers fear the new automation? Are technology-driven shifts in business and work causing income inequality to rise? How should public policy respond? Shifting Paradigms addresses these questions in an engaging manner for anyone interested in understanding how the economic and social agenda is being transformed by today's winds of change.
The world we live in is hugely unequal. People in a better socioeconomic position do not only lead more comfortable lives, but also longer and healthier lives. This is true not only in the poorer parts of the world but also in the richest countries, including the advanced welfare states of Western Europe which have successfully pushed back poverty and other forms of material disadvantage. Why are health inequalities - systematically higher rates of disease, disability, and premature death among people with a lower level of education, occupation or income - so persistent? How can we expect to reduce this when it persists even in the most advanced states? Written by a leading figure in public health, this book looks to answer these questions by taking a broad, critical look at the scientific evidence surrounding the explanation of health inequalities, including recent findings from the fields of epidemiology, sociology, psychology, economics, and genetics. It concludes that a simplistic view, in which health inequalities are a direct consequence of social inequality, does not tell us the full story. Drawing upon a unique series of studies covering 30 European countries and more than three decades of observations, it shows that health inequalities are partly driven by autonomous forces that are difficult to counteract, such as educational expansion, increased social mobility, and rapid but differential health improvements. Finally, the book explores how we might use these new findings to continue our efforts to build a healthier and more equal future. Offering a truly multidisciplinary perspective and an accessible writing style, Health Inequalities is an indispensable resource for health researchers, professionals, and policy-makers, as well as for social scientists interested in inequality.
Since the 1970s, we have witnessed unprecedented diff usion of digital technologies in both speed and geographic coverage. These technologies are pervasive and disruptive, and lead to profound shifts and transformations in societies and economies. Many claim that emerging network externalities are the principal phenomenon driving the process of technology diff usion and determining its in-time dynamics. This book analyzes the unique role network eff ects play in the process of digital technology diff usion. Using the time span of 1980–2022 and data from over 180 countries, the authors examines the strength and determinants of emerging network externalities in the process of digital technology diffusion across the world. Moreover, using international case studies it traces the process of technology convergence and technology convergence club formation, intending to answer whether cross-country gaps are diminishing or rather growing, and if countries form unique ‘clubs’ within which a rapid convergence occurs. Global Digital Technology Convergence is written for scholars and researchers in the fi elds of technology and innovation management, information and communication technology, economic development and the economics of innovation.
Susan Cozzens, Dhanaraj Thakur, and the other co-authors ask how the benefits and costs of emerging technologies are distributed amongst different countries _ some rich and some poor. Examining the case studies of five technologies across eight countri
