Education, routine, and complexity-biased Key Enabling Technologies: evidence from Emilia-Romagna, Italy

Abstract

ABSTRACT \\We analyse the relationship between the endowment of Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) and the demand for occupations, tasks, and skills in the local labour market areas (LLMAs) of Emilia-Romagna, Italy. We merge three data sources, and we compute the share of highly educated employees, of employees accomplishing low- versus high-routine tasks, and three novel indicators measuring the complexity of occupations, tasks, and skills. Our panel estimates show that a larger share of KETs not only corresponds to a higher demand for workers holding a tertiary education degree, or accomplishing less routinary tasks, but also to a higher demand for a wider, and more exclusive, set of occupations, tasks, and skills. These results are also robust to unobserved heterogeneity and reverse causality.