Skill-biased Technological Progress Research Articles

China's biased technological progress, labor market allocation and the change of trade division structure

China is facing the dual background of the biased technology change and the contraction of global division system. It is important to understand the evolution of the direction of technological progress and the resulting change in the shares of value added at home and abroad. This paper reveals the typical facts of the coexistence of China's technological progress in favor of high-skilled labor and the increase in the share of value added of the domestic division. We prove that skill-biased technological progress has a positive effect on improving the revenue of the domestic industrial division. The distortion of labor market allocation has an inhibitory effect on the local share of division brought about by biased technological progress. The change of technological gap has a nonlinear regulating effect. The narrowing of the technological gap between China and advanced countries is an important driving force to promote the reconfiguration of the industrial division system in domestic and foreign markets. Under the background of the contraction of the global division system, the conclusions have some enlightening significance to form resilient industrial chains in the domestic division system.

Comments on The Impacts of Financial Development, Urbanization, and Globalization on Income Inequality: A Regression-based Decomposition Approach

June 01 2019 Comments on The Impacts of Financial Development, Urbanization, and Globalization on Income Inequality: A Regression-based Decomposition Approach Author and Article Information Online Issn: 1536-0083 Print Issn: 1535-3516 © 2019 by the Asian Economic Panel and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology2019Asian Economic Panel and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Asian Economic Papers (2019) 18 (2): 142–143. https://doi.org/10.1162/asep_a_00704 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Comments on The Impacts of Financial Development, Urbanization, and Globalization on Income Inequality: A Regression-based Decomposition Approach. Asian Economic Papers 2019; 18 (2): 142–143. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/asep_a_00704 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsAsian Economic Papers Search Advanced Search Kwanho Shin, Korea University: Kuznets (1955) argued that although income inequality worsens during the early stages of economic development it eventually improves as the economy further develops. The reason is simple. As workers move from low-productivity sectors such as agriculture to high-productivity sectors such as manufacturing, income inequality aggravates at the beginning, but it improves as more and more workers join the high-productivity sectors. More recent studies do not support his arguments, however. For example, IMF (2007) found that income inequality is worsening again in advanced countries. OECD (2008) presents similar findings. Several explanations have been provided to account for recent worsening income inequality. First, several studies argue that skill-biased technological progress is responsible for widening wage gaps between skilled and unskilled workers, contributing to income inequality. Second, other studies also point out the role of trade globalization by arguing that imports from less-developed... You do not currently have access to this content.

Skill-specific unemployment risks: Employment protection and technological progress – A cross-national comparison

This article focuses on the relationship between employment protection legislation (EPL) and skill-specific unemployment risks. As a consequence of skill-biased technological progress, low- and high-skilled workers are expected to be affected differently. Moreover, the level of technological progress should moderate the relation between EPL and skill-specific unemployment risks. The analyses are based on data from the Labour Force Survey from the year 2008 and concentrate on the civilian labour force aged between 25 and 49 years in 20 European countries. The results show that stricter EPL strengthens unemployment risks between skill groups only when the level of technological progress is very advanced. In other countries, stricter EPL is related to less inequality in unemployment risks. However, there are two sides to a coin. While stricter EPL is related to lower unemployment risks for the low skilled in most countries, it leads to higher unemployment rates for the highly skilled at the same time.

ECONOMIC INEQUALITY: A SURVEY OF RECENT LITERATURE

Abstract. The purpose of this paper is to review the recent literature on economic inequality. In particular, the developments in the fields of economic growth, financial crises, happiness and skill (capital) biased technological progress are surveyed. By using the methods of systematic and narrative literature review and conducting meta-synthesis of the recent studies, it is shows that conventional wisdom is contested in all of the mentioned fields. The rising economic inequality is linked to financial crises as well as the slower and shorter economic growth. The Easterlin paradox is losing support. Skill-biased technological progress is possibly evolved into a capital-biased one.Key words: economic inequality, financial crises, skill-biased productivity, capital-biased productivity, the Easterlin paradox

Growing Income Inequalities in Advanced Countries

In this paper, we survey the literature that studies the issue of growing inequalities in advanced countries (the North). We firstly unveil the main facts concerning widening inequality in the North and we underlie the differences between countries and groups of countries. We put forward the concomitance of the rise in inequality with three key developments that are the three major explanations given to growing inequality: globalization, skill biased technological progress and institutional changes. We finally expose the mechanisms behind each explanation and examine the results of the empirical works that attempt to appraise their respective impacts. The overall diagnosis is that the three explanations are valid but (i) their weight may substantially differ across countries and sectors, and (ii) they interact in the determination of inequality.

Does demographic change matter for growth?

How important is the demographic transition for economic growth? To answer this question, this paper constructs a general equilibrium overlapping generations model with endogenous fertility. The model is calibrated to data from Taiwan, a country that experienced rapid economic growth while undergoing significant demographic transition. Our results suggest that more than one-third of the output growth in Taiwan during the past four decades can be attributed to demographic transition, while TFP growth explains another third and the remainder is mainly due to skill-biased technological progress. Our results show that demographic change is an important driver of the growth process in countries undergoing rapid fertility decline.

The Rise in Returns to Education and the Decline in Household Savings

This paper explores the consequences of rising returns to human capital investment on the personal savings rate. Over the past two decades, the return to college education has increased relative to high school education leading economists to argue the presence of 'skill biased technological progress'. The literature explaining household savings has also burgeoned considerably, motivated by its declining rate in the US over the past couple of decades. Stylized facts suggest a negative relationship between returns to education and savings rates across most of the past century and also a negative relationship between education spending and savings rates across OECD countries. In this paper, we present a model where a declining savings rate emerges as an outcome of an exogenously driven increase in the return to education. The link between the two is attributed to optimizing behavior of altruistic households. The results of our model are robust to the inclusion of life cycle savings and unintentional bequests. Some of the interesting results of our model are (i) a rise in the return to education raises education spending ratio by less than what it reduces the aggregate savings rate (ii) for some parameter values it actually reduces both the education spending rate and the aggregate savings rate and finally, (iii) it also raises the return to capital due to physical capital-human capital complementarity.

Human Capital Formation, Life Expectancy, and the Process of Development.

We provide a unified theory of the transition in income, life expectancy, education, and population size from a nondeveloped environment to sustained growth. Individuals optimally trade off the time cost of education with its lifetime returns. Initially, low longevity implies a prohibitive cost for human capital formation for most individuals. A positive feedback loop between human capital and increasing longevity, triggered by endogenous skill-biased technological progress, eventually provides sufficient returns for widespread education. The transition is not based on scale effects and induces population growth despite unchanged fertility. A simulation illustrates that the dynamics fit historical data patterns.

Frictional assignment, Part II: Infinite horizon and inequality

In an infinite-horizon economy with matching frictions, I study the efficient assignment between workers of different skill levels and machines of different quality levels. Under some restrictions I show that the efficient allocation assigns a unique machine quality and market tightness to each skill, and that the assignment is saddle-path stable. The efficient assignment is not necessarily positively assortative and efficient wages do not necessarily increase with the skill level. Nevertheless, the social value of workers always increases with the skill level. I then show that the efficient allocation can be decentralized by a market mechanism, in which the firms direct workers' search by announcing and committing to the machine quality, the skill level they intend to hire for such machines, and the time-path of wages. Finally, I calibrate the model to the US data and examine how a skill-biased technological progress affects the assignment and inequality.

SOCIAL STRATIFICATION, CAPITALSKILL COMPLEMENTARITY, AND THE NONMONOTONIC EVOLUTION OF THE EDUCATION PREMIUM

This paper presents a model that generates a nonmonotonic evolution of the return to education. The model highlights the role played by socioeconomic stratification in the joint determination of the supply of educated labor and the supply of physical capital. The recent theoretical literature attributes the increased education premium of the last decades to skill-biased technological progress. In contrast, our explanation is based on capital–skill complementarity and endogenous accumulation of physical and human capital in an environment characterized by credit constraints.

Wage Differentials and International Trade in Italy Using Individual Micro Data 1991-1996

Our results show that international integration, both in terms of trade in goods and in terms of international labour mobility, plays a role in determining the wage differential between skilled (white collar) and unskilled (blue collar) workers, but the impact is in opposite directions. While, on the one hand, increasing trade in goods reduces wage differentials (through a positive impact on the wages of the unskilled workers), on the other hand immigration increases wage differentials, affecting the wage of the unskilled. In addition, in line with the research in labour economics, our findings show that the individual characteristics of workers matter in explaining wage differentials: the growth of women participation in the labour market reduces the wage gap, while the ageing of the employees increases it. In this paper we use individual micro data on workers combined with industry and regional data to study the dynamics of the wage differentials between skilled and unskilled workers in Italy in the period 1991-1996. Being different to previous empirical studies, our data allow us to explore in a unique framework the role of many of the factors indicated in the literature as possible causes of the widening of the wage gap between skilled and unskilled workers: changes in the individual characteristics of workers, changes in the institutions of the labour market, increasing international integration and skill-biased technological progress.

Jobs for Young University Graduates: Is it Worth Having a Degree?

This study addresses the question: Are workers who hold a university degree increasingly filling job openings meant for people with lower levels of schooling? It focuses on Portugal, where the higher education system has been expanding at a fast pace and the share of university graduates in total labour force has been increasing, but where the unemployment rate for such workers has also been increasing. The analysis relies on a remarkable dataset covering the entire workforce in manufacturing and services private sectors, to implement the conceptual framework developed by Gottschalk and Hansen (2003). Results indicate that the university wage premium increased and the proportion of university graduates working in non-university jobs declined sharply over time. Therefore, no support is found for the skepticism over investment in higher education. Results are consistent with the idea that skill-biased technological progress taking place in some sectors raises the productivity of workers with higher schooling levels, thus raising their wages, which attracts new workers with high qualifications.

Education, Growth, and Income Inequality

Estimates of the effect of education on GDP (the social return) have been hard to reconcile with micro evidence on the private return to schooling. We present a simple explanation combining two ideas: imperfect substitution and endogenous skill-biased technological progress and use cross-country panel data on inequality and GDP to test these ideas. A one-year increase in the level of education reduces the private return by 2 percentage points, consistent with Katz-Murphy's (1992) elasticity of substitution. We find no evidence for reversal of this initial effect as in Acemoglu (2002). In the short run, the social return equals the private return.

Comparative Advantage, Relative Wages, and the Accumulation of Human Capital

We apply Ricardo's principle of comparative advantage for a theory of factor substitutability. An assignment model with a continuum of worker and job types is applied. Highly skilled workers have a comparative advantage in complex jobs. The model satisfies the Distance Dependent Elasticity of Substitution characteristic: substitutability between types declines with their skill distance. The model is particularly useful for the analysis of the effects of human capital accumulation on relative wages. These effects can be decomposed in composition and extension effects. Composition effects compress the wage distribution. Then, an equiproportional increase in human capital of all skill types compresses the wage distribution, since extension effects cancel in that case. A workhorse model is provided capturing human capital accumulation and skill biased technological progress. Empirical studies suggest a one year rise in the average level of education to reduce the return to human capital by 20%.

Skills Substitutability and Technological Progress: U.S. States 1950-1990

In this article we estimate the long-run aggregate elasticity of substitution between skilled and unskilled workers. This is an important parameter as it allows us to compute the skill biased technological progress (SBTP) from the evolution of relative wages. However, it is hard to estimate because skill supply is endogenous. We tackle the task by using instruments proposed by the labor literature as sources of exogenous variation of schooling achievements across U.S. States. They are the state laws on Compulsory Schooling Attendance and on Child Labor. We then calculate SBTP and, using growth accounting, we calculate Hicks neutral technological progress (HNTP) for U.S. states in each decade between 1950 and 1990.

A Directed Search Model of Inequality with Heterogeneous Skills and Skill?Biased Technology

In this paper I analyse the directed search/matching problem in an economy with heterogeneous skills and skill-biased technology. A unique symmetric equilibrium exists and is socially efficient. Matching is partially mixed in the equilibrium. A high-tech firm receives both skilled and unskilled applicants with positive probability, and favours skilled workers, while a low-tech firm receives only unskilled applicants. The model generates wage inequality among identical unskilled workers, as well as between-skill inequality, despite the fact that all unskilled workers perform the same task and have the same productivity in the two types of firms. Inequality has interesting responses to skill-biased technological progress, a general productivity slowdown, and an exogenous increase in the skill supply elasticity.

Can Skill Biased Technological Progress Have a Role in the Decline of the Savings Rate?

This paper explores the consequences of skill biased technological progress on the savings rates. The literature, both theoretical and empirical, on the causes and consequences of skill biased technological progress in the past few years has burgeoned considerably. So has the literature on declining household savings, motivated by the American experience over the past couple of decades. I present a general equilibrium model where declining savings rates emerges as an outcome of exogenously driven skill biased technological progress. The link between the two is attributed to optimizing behavior of altruistic households. In an overlapping generations model, parents are assumed to derive utility from both spending on their children’s education and making monetary transfers (or bequests). I show that increases in the growth rate of skill biased technological change causes a shift in allocations away from bequests in favor of educationleading to a decline in domestic capital accumulation. The analysis is extended to incorporate life cycle savings both under certainty and uncertainty regarding the timing of death.

Wage Inequality and the Effort Incentive Effects of Technological Progress

To explain the rise in the college wage premium in developed economies in the past decades, the present paper examines the effects of technological progress on workers' effort incentives, which determine the effective labor supply. Five effort incentive effects of technological progress are identified, and through these we obtain a number of results. Firstly, we establish that wage inequality can increase following an acceleration in skill-neutral technological progress. Secondly, an increase in skill-biased technological progress means, (i) skilled wages overshoot, (ii) unskilled wages undershoot, and hence (iii) wage inequality overshoots their respective long-run values. Thirdly, endogenizing the number of skilled and unskilled workers on the basis of economic incentives does not eliminate wage inequality even in the long run. Fourthly, we can obtain hysteresis effects in the determination of long-run wage inequality. Finally, government policies which raise the equilibrium rate of unemployment are likely to reduce the impact of technical progress on inequality, and this may help to explain the relative increase in inequality in the US and UK compared with other European economies. Our focus on the supply-side complements studies which emphasize the impact of skill-biased technological progress on relative demand for skill workers.

Social Stratification, Capital-Skill Complementarity and the Non-Monotonic Evolution of the Education Premium

This paper presents a model that generates a non-monotonic evolution of the return to education. The model highlights the role played by socioeconomic stratification in the joint determination of the supply of educated labor and the supply of physical capital. The recent theoretical literature attributes the increased education premium of the last decades to skill-biased technological progress. In contrast, our explanation is based on capital-skill complementarity and endogenous accumulation of physical and human capital in an environment characterized by credit constraints.

Entrepreneurs, Professionals, and Growth

We examine the implications for growth and development of the existence of two types of human capital: entrepreneurial and professional. Entrepreneurs accumulate human capital through a work-experience intensive process, whereas professionals’ human capital accumulation is education-intensive. Moreover, the return to entrepreneurship is uncertain. We show how skill-biased technological progress leads to changes in the composition of aggregate human capital; as technology improves, individuals devote less time to the accumulation of human capital through work experience and more to the accumulation of human capital through professional training. Thus, our model explains why entrepreneurs play a relatively more important role in intermediate-income countries and professionals are relatively more abundant in richer economies. It also shows that those countries that initially have too little of either entrepreneurial or professional human capital may end up in a development trap.