General purpose technology and wage inequality
TLDR
The authors formalizes the idea of generality of technology in two ways, one related to human capital (skill transferability) and one to physical capital (vintage compatibility) and studies the impact of an increase in these two dimensions of technological generality on equilibrium wage inequality.Abstract:
The recent changes in the US wage structure are often linked to the new wave of capital-embodied information technologies. The existing literature has emphasized either the accelerated pace or the skill-bias of embodied technical progress as the driving force behind the rise in wage inequality. A key, neglected, aspect is the “general purpose” nature of the new information technologies. This paper formalizes the idea of generality of technology in two ways, one related to human capital (skill transferability) and one to physical capital (vintage compatibility) and studies the impact of an increase in these two dimensions of technological generality on equilibrium wage inequality.read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
Changes in Relative Wages, 1963–1987: Supply and Demand Factors
Lawrence F. Katz,Kevin M. Murphy +1 more
TL;DR: A simple supply and demand framework is used to analyze changes in the U.S. wage structure from 1963 to 1987 as discussed by the authors, showing that rapid secular growth in the demand for more-educated workers, "more-skilled" workers, and females appears to be the driving force behind observed changes in wage structure.
Book ChapterDOI
Investment in humans, technological diffusion and economic growth
TL;DR: Most economic theorists have embraced the principle that education enhances one's ability to receive, decode, and understand information, and that information processing and interpretation is important for performing or learning to perform many jobs as discussed by the authors.
Journal ArticleDOI
Labor Market Institutions and the Distribution of Wages, 1973-1992: a Semiparametric Approach.
TL;DR: In this paper, a semiparametric procedure is presented to analyze the effects of institutional and labor market factors on recent changes in the U.S. distribution of wages, including de-unionization and supply and demand shocks.
Journal ArticleDOI
Wage Inequality and the Rise in Returns to Skill
TL;DR: This paper found that the trend toward increased wage inequality is apparent within narrowly defined education and labor market experience groups, and that much of the increase in wage inequality for males over the last 20 years is due to increased returns to the components of skill other than years of schooling and years of labor market experiences.
Posted Content
Technical Change, Inequality, and the Labor Market
TL;DR: The authors argue that the behavior of wages and returns to schooling indicates that technical change has been skill-biased during the past sixty years and that the recent increase in inequality is most likely due to an acceleration in skill bias.
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