The March of the Techies: Technology, Trade, and Job Polarization in France, 1994-2007

Abstract

and West Lafayette for helpful comments. Abiy Teshome provided excellent research assistance. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Delving into the demand side: Changes in workplace specialization and job polarization

“…The modest increase in non-routine manual employment is entirely accounted for by the increase in the proportion of workplaces specializing in such occupations, as captured by the between-specialization component reported in Column (4) of Table 16 This is different from a more standard decomposition of within versus between firm components (as performed by Böckerman et al, 2016;Pekkala Kerr et al, 2015;Harrigan et al, 2015), which we are not able to carry out in our context due to the lack of suitable longitudinal data. Our exercise is motivated by our earlier finding of widespread and increasing occupational specialization.…”

“…Böckerman et al (2016) and Pekkala Kerr et al (2015) use panel data from Finland to analyze the importance of within and between firm changes in contributing to the overall changes in the occupational composition of the economy. Harrigan et al (2015) develop a new measure of the propensity of firms to adopt new technologies, and use administrative data from France to analyze the link between this measure and changes in the occupational composition of employment within firms. Our results complement the findings from these recent papers by emphasizing the pervasiveness of specialization within establishments and by showing how changes over time in the specialization patterns are linked to the polarization of employment observed at the aggregate level.…”

Polarization and the growth of low‐skill service jobs in Spanish local labor markets

“…its generality, plenty of studies confirm the pervasiveness of job polarization in Europe (Goos, Manning, & Salomons, 2014;Michaels, Rauch, & Redding, in press) and in the context of other major technological transitions like electrification in the 19th century (Gray, 2013). Empirical work on polarization now covers the U.S. , Europe (Gregory, Salomons, & Zierahn, 2016) as well as individual countries (i.e., Adermon & Gustavson, 2011;Asplund, Barth, Lundborg, & Nilsen, 2011;Dauth, 2014;Fonseca, Lima, & Pereira, 2018;Harrigan, Reshef, & Toubal, 2016;Salvatori, 2015). The task-based approach has become popular also among economic geographers who study the impact of local occupational structures on competitive performance in metropolitan areas and regions (Bacolod, Blum, & Strange, 2010;Feser, 2003;Kok & Ter Weel, 2014;Scott, 2010;Scott & Mantegna, 2009).…”

Does ICT Usage Erode Routine Occupations at the Firm Level?

“…Michaels et al (2014) used country-industry panel data and showed that wage bill shares (and relative wages) for both high-and low-education levels are positively related to industry ICT capital, whereas those for the middle education levels are negatively related to ICT. In the previous firm-level literature Bartel et al (2007) focus on a narrow manufacturing sector; Akerman et al (2015) use a very specific ICT technology (broadband Internet); Cortes and Salvatori (2015) use computer share and an indicator for adoption of new technology from a management survey; Gaggl and Wright (2017) use ICT investments rather than detailed ICT technologies; Harrigan et al (2016) use the share of 'techies' (ICT-related personnel) as a proxy for ICT services; and Pekkala Kerr et al (2016) use one indicator for the share of employees using ICT from 1 year. In contrast to these either narrow or very broad ICT measures used in the contemporary literature, we utilize detailed information about a broad set of specific ICT technologies used by firms in all sectors of the economy, which more comprehensively captures the penetration of new technology into the organization of tasks within firms.…”