The impact of ICT on the demand for skilled labour: A cross-country comparison

Abstract

This paper provides a unique cross-country comparative perspective on the impact of information and communication technology on the demand for skilled labour. It employs panel data for the US, the UK and France, comprising several skill categories for each country for the 1980s and 1990s. The paper considers the issue of whether skill bias is transitory or permanent both by considering changes through time and by dividing the highly skilled into IT specific and other occupations. The results indicate that the impact of technology on the demand for skilled labour is slowing down, at least in the US, supporting a transitory interpretation.

Broadband access in the EU: An assessment of future economic benefits

“…They showed that US-owned multinational firms achieved significantly greater productivity gains through IT than non-US multinationals, and that establishments taken over by US firms achieved significantly greater productivity gains through IT than statistically similar establishments taken over by non-US multinationals. They also found that US-owned firms had higher levels of people management than their non-US counterparts, and that this Robinson and Vecchi, 2008). In the European countries they found a stronger impact of the level of ICT intensity (measured by ICT capital divided by total capital) on the demand for IT workers than on the demand for highly skilled workers not in IT occupations.…”

Human capital, employment protection and growth in Europe

“…23 The intuition is that EPL is likely to be more binding for a country near the technological frontier because in that case productivity growth is more likely to arise from radical innovations than from innovations at the margin or simply from imitation and adoption of existing technologies (Saint-Paul, 2002). 24 18 However, it is important to acknowledge that, as new technologies are fully implemented, firms may substitute highly educated workers with lower educated ones (Chun, 2003;O'Mahony et al, 2008). If this effect prevails, we should expect to find a smaller effect of EPL in the most recent period.…”

New technology and old institutions: An empirical analysis of the skill-biased demand for older workers in Europe

“…The empirical specification used in this paper to analyse the impact of technology on the wage shares of skilled and unskilled workers is based on, among others, Chun (2003) and O"Mahony et al (2008). Wage shares are assumed to depend on the capital-output ratio and the share of ICT capital in total capital.…”