Changes in the Structure of Wages During the 1980's:  An Evaluation     of Alternative Explanations

Bound, John; Johnson, G. V.

doi:10.3386/w2983

Cited by 950 publications

(883 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Empirically, skill-biased technical change is consistent with increased employment shares of skilled labor within individual sectors (or firms/plants, depending on the 2 See e.g. Katz and Murphy (1992)), Bound and Johnson (1992), Lawrence and Slaughter (1993), Berman, Bound, and Griliches (1994)) for the United States, and Haskel (1998), Haskel and Slaughter (2001b)) for the United Kingdom.…”

Section: Technology Trade and Wagesmentioning

confidence: 97%

Working on the Train? The Role of Technical Progress and Trade in Explaining Wage Differentials in Italian Firms

Manasse

Stanca

2003

SSRN Journal

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This paper presents firm-level evidence on the dynamics of the relative demand for non-manual workers in Italian manufacturing during the 1990s. The analysis provides a number of interesting results. First, within-firm skill upgrading is the main determinant of the increase in the non-manual wage bill share. By contrast, demand changes associated to trade have shifted employment away from skill-intensive firms. Second, while the relative number of hours worked by skilled workers within firms has risen, the hourly wage premium has fallen. Third, within-firm skill upgrading is strongly and significantly related to investment in computers and R&D, suggesting skill-biased technical progress as the main explanation for the increase in the relative demand for non-manual workers. Finally, the paper shows that failing to disaggregate annual wages into the number of hours worked and hourly wages, leads to underestimate the skill-bias of technical progress. * We thank ISTAT for kindly providing the data for this study. We are indebted to Silvia Prina for excellent research assistance. Giorgio Basevi and Paolo Epifani provided useful comments.

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Section: Technology Trade and Wagesmentioning

confidence: 97%

Working on the Train? The Role of Technical Progress and Trade in Explaining Wage Differentials in Italian Firms

Manasse

Stanca

2003

SSRN Journal

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“…In 2006, manufacturing employment represented approximately 10 per cent of the workforce in those countries. 1 Skill-biased technological change -see, for example, Bound and Johnson (1992) or Machin and Van Reenen (1998) -and globalization -see, for example, Wood (1994, 1998 -have been the leading explanations for the observed decline in manufacturing employment and, in particular, for the decrease in the demand for unskilled relative to skilled workers. Analyses of the effect on manufacturing of the reduction in trade barriers in recent years suggest that competition from emerging countries, namely China and India, has had a negative impact on manufacturing employment in developed countries -see, for example, Bernard et al (2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Employment and Exchange Rates: The Role of Openness and Technology

et al. 2010

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Real exchange rate movements are important drivers of the reallocation of resources between sectors of the economy. Economic theory suggests that the impact of exchange rates should vary with the degree of exposure to international competition and with the technology level. We show that both the degree of openness and the technology level mediate the impact of exchange rate movements on labour market developments. According to our estimations, whereas employment in hightechnology sectors seems to be relatively immune to changes in real exchange rates, these appear to have sizable and significant effects on highly open low-technology sectors. The analysis of job flows suggests that the impact of exchange rates on these sectors occurs through employment destruction.

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“…Empirically, skillbiased technical change is consistent with increased employment shares of skilled labor within individual sectors (or firms/plants, depending on the 2 See e.g. Katz and Murphy (1992)), Bound and Johnson (1992), Lawrence and Slaughter (1993), Berman, Bound, and Griliches (1994)) for the United States, and Haskel (1998), Haskel and Slaughter (2001b)) for the United Kingdom.…”

Section: Technology Trade and Wagesmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Bound and Johnson (1992) and Berman et al (1994) for the United States, but also Berman et al (1998) and Machin and Van Reenen (1998) for an international perspective). 8 This conclusion is supported by two main findings.…”

Section: Technology Trade and Wagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Working on the Train? The Role of Technical Progress and Trade in Explaining Wage Differentials in Italian Firms

Manasse

Stanca

2003

SSRN Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper presents firm-level evidence on the dynamics of the relative demand for non-manual workers in Italian manufacturing during the 1990s. The analysis provides a number of interesting results. First, the rise within firms in the share of non manual workers in both employment and hours worked (within-firm skill upgrading) is the main determinant of the increase in the relative demand for skilled workers. By contrast, demand changes associated to trade have mitigated such a rise by shifting employment away from skill-intensive firms. Second, while the relative number of hours worked by skilled workers within firms has risen, the hourly wage premium has fallen. Third, within-firm skill upgrading is strongly and significantly related to investment in computers and R&D. Fourth, we find that technical progress has raised the relative productivity of skilled workers (the skill-bias of technical progress is positive). Finally we show that the standard approach that measures annual, rather than hourly relative * We thank ISTAT for kindly providing the data for this study. We are indebted to Silvia Prina for excellent research assistance. Giorgio Basevi and Paolo Epifani provided useful comments.

show abstract

Changes in the Structure of Wages During the 1980's: An Evaluation of Alternative Explanations

Cited by 950 publications

References 14 publications

Working on the Train? The Role of Technical Progress and Trade in Explaining Wage Differentials in Italian Firms

Working on the Train? The Role of Technical Progress and Trade in Explaining Wage Differentials in Italian Firms

Employment and Exchange Rates: The Role of Openness and Technology

Working on the Train? The Role of Technical Progress and Trade in Explaining Wage Differentials in Italian Firms

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