Capital-skill Complementarity Research Articles

Redistributive Capital Taxation Revisited

This paper uses a rich quantitative model with endogenous skill acquisition to show that capital-skill complementarity provides a quantitatively significant rationale to tax capital for redistributive governments. The optimal capital income tax rate is 67 percent, while it is 61 percent in an identically calibrated model without capital-skill complementarity. The skill premium falls from 1.9 to 1.84 along the transition following the optimal reform in the capital-skill complementarity model, implying substantial indirect redistribution from skilled to unskilled workers. These results show that a redistributive government should take into account capital-skill complementarity when taxing capital. (JEL D31, H21, H23, H24, H25, J24, J31)

Spatial disparity of skill premium in China: The role of financial intermediation development

In China, the relative wages of high-skilled and low-skilled workers display huge variation across different regions. We examine whether financial intermediation development (FID) can explain such variation. Conceptually, better-developed financial intermediation helps financially-constrained firms raise new capital, which is usually skill-biased, resulting in an increased demand for skilled labor and skill premium. Using a cross-section of workers from the 1% Population Survey of 2005, we find consistent evidence; besides, the relationship is stronger among workers in industries with higher capital-skill complementarity and in non-state-owned enterprises. Overall, our results suggest that the financial market plays a role in explaining skill premium in China.

Human Capital and Financial Development: Firm-Level Interactions and Macroeconomic Implications

Abstract Capital-skill complementarity in production implies non-trivial interactions between the availability of human capital and financial constraints. Firms that are constrained in their access to finance hire a lower proportion of skilled workers than do unconstrained firms. Conversely, a lack of human capital increases skilled wages, reducing firms’ desired capital intensity and thus loosening firms’ effective financial constraints. To assess the macroeconomic implications of such firm-level interactions, we build an occupational-choice model with capital-skill complementarity in production, which we calibrate to US data. We vary financial frictions, educational attainment and total factor productivity across countries, and we quantify how aggregate output, wage inequality and entrepreneurship are affected by financial market liberalizations and increases in educational attainment. For aggregate output, the joint effect of both factors is, on average, 30% larger than the sum of the individual effects. Taking the educational attainment of the population as given, in countries with a negligible share of tertiary-educated workers and low total factor productivity, financial development has only small effects on aggregate output.

Quality of communications infrastructure, local structural transformation, and inequality

Abstract We estimate the causal impact of communication infrastructure quality on growth and structural transformation. We use variation across US counties’ Internet speeds in 2018 and build an instrument using ARPANET, a military network that preceded the modern Internet, with its location documented in historical government reports. We find that doubling Internet speeds increases the 4-year employment growth by 3.3–6.1 percentage points. Faster Internet shifts economic activity toward high-skilled services and away from non-tradeable services while increasing inequality. Industry linkages, capital-skill complementarity, and information and communication technology workers’ sorting rationalize our results. Medium and small cities and rural areas drive our results.

Intermediate Goods–Skill Complementarity

Abstract Recent research has begun to imply intermediate goods–skill complementarity; however, this possible complementarity has been hypothesized but not statistically tested, despite the increasing importance of intermediate goods in production. This study provides statistical evidence regarding whether intermediate goods are more complementary with skilled labor than with unskilled labor. Using panel data from 40 countries over the period 1995–2009, we estimate a two-level constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function. Our major findings are fivefold. First, at the aggregated one-sector level, the elasticity of substitution between intermediate goods and unskilled labor is 1.22, which is significantly greater than that between intermediate goods and skilled labor of 1.05, indicating intermediate goods–skill complementarity. Second, at the disaggregated level, such complementarity is primarily observed in heavy manufacturing industries and the service sector, whereas complementarity is observed between intermediate goods and unskilled labor in the primary sector and light manufacturing industries. Third, the normalization of the data and the cumulant estimators exhibit stronger results. Fourth, our baseline results are confirmed applying several robustness checks, such as switching skilled and unskilled labor or considering capital–skill complementarity. Finally, intermediate goods–skill complementarity tends to be higher for industries that use more imported intermediate goods.

Capital-skill complementarity and regional inequality: A spatial general equilibrium analysis

This paper employs a large scale numerical spatial general equilibrium model featuring capital-skill complementarities in production to study the distributional implications of a capital-augmenting technological shift across regions and skills groups. Similarly to the existing literature, we find a negative relationship between the labour income share and the capital labour-ratio. Our counterfactual shows that the effects are quite uneven across skills and regions, benefiting mostly high-skilled workers at the detriment of the low and the medium skilled. This is particularly so in more developed regions compared with less developed ones. We show that the effects stem from regional initial conditions, and in particular the regional capital–labour ratio, trade linkages and unemployment rates.

Capital flows and income inequality

We document empirical evidence that surges in capital inflows (outflows) raise (reduce) income inequality. We study the mechanism through which changes in capital flows and capital account policies can influence income distributions in a small open economy model. Our model features heterogeneous agents and financial frictions, with banks intermediating between household savings and entrepreneur investment. Inflow surges disproportionately raise entrepreneur income, exacerbating inequality, while increases in outflows boost the share of household income, alleviating inequality. Under capital-skill complementarity, capital account liberalization that induces net capital inflows raises both the skill wage premium and overall income inequality. These predictions are in line with our empirical evidence.

Revisiting capital-skill complementarity, inequality, and labor share

This paper analyzes the quantitative contribution of capital-skill complementarity in accounting for rising wage inequality, as in Krusell, Ohanian, Rios-Rull, and Violante (KORV, 2000). We study how well the KORV framework accounts for more recent data, including the large changes in labor's share of income that occurred after the KORV estimation period ended. We also study how using information and communications technology (ICT) capital as the complementary capital stock affects the model's implications for inequality and overall model fit. We find significant evidence for continued capital-skill complementarity across all model permutations we analyze. Despite nearly 30 years of additional data, we find very little change to the original KORV estimates of substitution elasticities when the total stock of capital equipment is used as the complementary capital stock. We find much more capital-skill complementarity when ICT capital is used. The KORV framework continues to closely account for rising wage inequality through 2019, though it misses the three percentage points decline in labor's share of income that has occurred since 2000.

Imports of key capital goods and quality upgrading: Evidence from China's import subsidy policy

This paper examines the impact of capital goods imports on firms' export quality upgrading with a subsidy policy for advanced capital imports implemented in China since 2008. Using a matched dataset of firms' production and custom data, we employ a difference-in-differences strategy that exploits firms' differential pre-event exposures to the policy. We find that the subsidy policy increases firms' imports of subsidized products, and improves their export quality. Furthermore, export quality improvements due to capital goods imports are larger if (1) firms are more productive; (2) the exporting product is the firm's core product; (3) the product is a differentiated good; and (4) the destination market is larger and richer. Further analysis suggests that capital goods imports can also boost firms' total exports and the number of exporting destinations and products. The mechanism tests reveal that capital-skill complementarity can explain improved export product quality through capital goods imports. Capital goods imports also lead to increased skill management that can improve export quality as well.

Does environmental regulation affect capital-labor ratio of manufacturing enterprises: Evidence from China

Currently, China faces the dual pressures of finding ways to address the unstable ecological environment improvement and rising labor costs. All sectors of society are concerned about how to perfect the structure of enterprise factors input to improve production efficiency and adapt to high-quality economic development. This paper examines the impact of environmental regulation on the capital-labor ratio of manufacturing enterprises in China. The results indicate that the implementation of the new EPL (Environmental Protection Law) increases the capital-labor ratio of heavy polluting manufacturing enterprises. This conclusion is still robust to parallel trend tests, considering sample selection bias, random factors, as well as expected effects. Enterprises response to the new EPL by increasing capital factors input and hiring high-skilled labor, which is in line with the capital-skill complementarity hypothesis and reflects the views of Karabarbounis and Neiman (2014). In addition, this study investigates the effects of capital deepening on the production and operational efficiency of heavy-polluting manufacturing firms. Results show that the implementation of the new EPL can facilitate the reduction of enterprise's production costs and the improvement of total factor productivity.

Capital-skill complementarity and inequality: Twenty years after

We revisit a seminal capital-skill complementarity analysis of Krusell et al. (2000). We extended their 1963–1992 data set to include the 1992–2017 period. We find that over the recent years, the skill premium pattern changed dramatically, from a U-shaped to a monotonically increasing. However, the capital-skill complementarity framework remains remarkably successful in explaining the data. This is true even when the model is estimated using a significantly declining labor share as in Karabarbounis and Neiman (2014). We finally construct a projection for skill premium for 2017–2037, and we conclude that the inequality will continue to grow in the US economy.

Globalization, trade imbalances and inequality

What is the role of trade imbalances for the distributional consequences of globalization? We answer this question through the lens of a quantitative, general equilibrium, multi-country, multi-sector model of trade with four key ingredients: (a) workers with different levels of skills are organized into separate representative households; (b) endogenous trade imbalances arise from households’ consumption and saving decisions; (c) production exhibits capital-skill complementarity; and (d) labor markets feature both sectoral mobility frictions and non-employment. We conduct a series of counterfactual experiments that illustrate the quantitative importance of both trade imbalances and capital-skill complementarity for the dynamics of the skill premium. We show that modeling trade imbalances can lead to stark differences between short- and long-run consequences of globalization shocks for the skill premium.

Is “Well-Paid Employment” Worth It? Evidence from Corporate Investment in China

ABSTRACT This study investigates the effect of employee compensation on corporate investment decisions using a sample of Chinese listed companies during the period 2007–2019. We find that the improvement of employee compensation competitiveness reduces the overall investment level, but improves the investment efficiency, which supports the capital-skill complementarity theory and the liquidity constraint theory, rather than the displacement theory. We use the social insurance law as a quasi-natural experiment, and the adjustment of the personal income tax rate as an instrumental variable to relieve the endogeneity concern. In addition, cross-sectional analysis and mechanism analysis show that employee compensation competitiveness can crowd out enterprise investment and improve investment efficiency by increasing liquidity constraints, thereby improving the quality of human capital and increasing innovation. Overall, this study provides insights into how employee compensation reduces corporate investment and increases corporate investment efficiency in developing countries.

Total factor productivity growth at the firm-level: The effects of capital account liberalization

This study provides firm-level evidence on the effect of capital account liberalization on total factor productivity (TFP) growth. We find that a one standard deviation increase in the capital account openness indicator constructed by Fernández et al. (2016) is significantly associated with a 0.18 standard deviation increase in firms’ TFP growth rates. The productivity-enhancing effects are stronger for sectors with higher external finance dependence and capital-skill complementarity, and are persistent five years after liberalization. Moreover, we show that potential transmission mechanisms include improved financing conditions, greater skilled labor utilization, and technology upgrades. Finally, we document heterogeneous effects across firm size and tradability, and threshold effects with respect to the country's institutional quality.

Understanding international differences in the skill premium: The role of capital taxes and transfers

We show that the size of the tax and transfer system affects the level of wage inequality in a heterogeneous agent/incomplete markets model, extended to allow for capital–skill complementarity. The skill premium can decrease significantly with an increase in the size of the tax and transfer system due to a rise in the capital income tax rate when idiosyncratic shocks to labor productivity are not insurable. The differences in the steady-state skill premium under different capital income tax rates are consistent with those observed across countries.

Macroeconomic Effects of Capital Tax Rate Changes

We study aggregate, distributional, and welfare effects of a permanent reduction in the capital tax rate in a quantitative model with capital-skill complementarity and household heterogeneity. Such a tax reform leads to expansionary long-run aggregate output and investment effects, but those are coupled with increases in wage, consumption, and income inequality. The tax reform is not self-financing and its effects depend crucially on whether the government cuts lump-sum transfers or raises distortionary labor or consumption tax rates for financing. The former results in a larger aggregate expansion, but at the expense of a greater rise in inequality. As a result, the latter is relatively more beneficial for unskilled households. We find that the tax reform, when the consumption tax rate adjusts, leads to a Pareto improvement in terms of life-time welfare. For transition dynamics, monetary policy, in addition to the fiscal adjustments, matters. In particular, if monetary policy inflates away a portion of the public debt, the economy can avoid the short-run contraction that would arise otherwise.

ICT capital–skill complementarity and wage inequality: Evidence from OECD countries

Although wage inequality has evolved in advanced countries over recent decades, it remains unknown the extent to which changes in wage inequality and their differences across countries are attributable to specific capital and labor quantities. We examine this issue by estimating a sector-level production function extended to allow for capital–skill complementarity and factor-biased technological change using cross-country and cross-industry panel data. Our results indicate that most of the changes in the skill premium are attributable to the relative quantities of ICT equipment, skilled labor, and unskilled labor in the goods and service sectors of the majority of advanced countries.

Investment incentives and the relative demand for skilled labor: Evidence from accelerated depreciation policies in China

This study evaluates the effects of China's 2014 and 2015 accelerated depreciation policies on the relative demand of firms for skilled labor. We develop a simple model to explore how the policies affect the relative demand of firms for skilled labor and illustrate the roles of financing constraints and tax compliance in mediating the policy effects. We then employ a firm-level dataset from China's A-share listed companies and use a quasi-experimental design to examine the model predictions. We find that the policies significantly increase the relative demand of firms for skilled labor. The channels underlying the policy effects are that the policies generate additional cash flow for firms, stimulate investment and, thus, raise the demand of firms for skilled labor with the presence of capital–skill complementarity. We also find that the positive effects of the policies on the relative demand for skilled labor are primarily significant for firms with strong financing constraints and high tax compliance. Moreover, we document the positive effects of the policies on R&D investment, firm value added, productivity, workers' benefits, and corporate social responsibility performance, which further corroborate our main results.

The decline in capital-skill complementarity

We revisit the capital-skill complementarity hypothesis and examine whether and under what conditions this mechanism can explain the developments in wage inequality and labor share in the 1963–2016 period. Krusell, Ohanian, Ríos-Rull and Violante (2000) show that a model with capital-skill complementarity mechanism matches the data well and can account for changes in wage inequality in the 1963–1992 period. We show that applying the model to the 1963–2016 period delivers a good fit for the skill premium; however, it does not match the declining pattern in labor share in the last two decades. We modify the model to allow for a flexible technology structure and show that the degree of capital-skill complementarity is declining over time. The augmented model with time-varying capital-skill complementarity suggests explanations for the declining labor share.

Wage Risk and the Skill Premium

Abstract The skill premium has increased significantly in the United States in the last five decades. During the same period, individual wage risk has also increased. This paper proposes a mechanism through which a rise in wage risk increases the skill premium. Intuitively, a rise in uninsured wage risk increases precautionary savings, thereby boosting capital accumulation, which increases the skill premium due to capital-skill complementarity. Using a quantitative macroeconomic model, we find that the rise in wage risk observed between 1967 and 2010 increases the skill premium significantly. This finding is robust across a variety of model specifications.