computer use and earnings in britain this paper estimates various models of the effect of computer use on earnings using recent ncds data the cross section estimates are large and significant while the standard fixed effects estimates are small or insignificant the panel estimates change considerably once we allow the coefficients to differ across individuals conditional on assumptions about when individuals use computers conventional panel estimates may not identify the crucial parameters and alternative methods are needed we conclude that there was a substantial premium associated with computer use for some individuals in the uk

if not computers then what returns to computer use in the uk revisited in recent years much attention has been paid to the effect on wages of skill biased technology especially the use of computers although empirical studies have shown a positive relationship between computer use and earnings doubts have been cast on whether this is a causal relationship or merely represents unobserved other factors which are themselves positively linked to computer usage this study provides evidence that computers themselves raise wages although their impact on wages falls as other controls are included in the regression it still remains significant whilst the effect of another proxy for unobserved factors becomes insignificant furthermore improvements in computer use have an additional impact on earnings supporting the productivity interpretation

modeling local growth control decisions in a multi city case do spatial interactions and lobbying efforts matter our article analyzes the determinants of local growth control decisions which are modeled as the result of a political struggle between different groups of voters and organized lobbies we show that under specific hypotheses a higher homeownership rate can induce lower levels of controls considering residential choices as endogenous to growth control policies the local decisions to control growth become strategically interdependent assuming imperfect mobility we show that a spatial econometric specification can be directly derived from our theoretical model our empirical analysis concerning the determinants of the taxelocale d equipement a french local development tax is thus naturally based on spatial econometrics its results confirm the major predictions of our model

human capital formation and local economic performance bradley s and taylor j 1996 human capital formation and local economic performance reg studies 30 1 14 this paper is concerned with the interaction between the vocational education and training system vet and local economic performance in britain after briefly discussing the shortcomings of britain s vet system the paper examines the way in which the education and training system and the local economy interact in particular it is argued that the outputs from the local education and training system determine and are determined by the locality s stock of high skill workers these high skill workers in turn help to determine the competitiveness and hence the economic performance of the local economy this has feedback effects on the stock of high skill workers through its effect on the occupational mix of in migrants some empirical tests of the model are provided based on data relating to 107 local education authority areas in england bradley s et taylor j 1996 la formation du capi

class size education and wages we use micro data for england and wales to examine the effects of class size on the decision to stay on in full time schooling at 16 and on wages later in life we find that class size has a sizeable and significant effect on the decision to stay on this finding is very robust wage equations show the effect of staying on is significantly positive for wages combining this with the effect of class size on the staying on decision reveals that class size significantly affects future wages reduced form models lead to much less accurate and insignificant estimates

skill biased technological change and rising wage inequality some problems and puzzles the recent rise in wage inequality is usually attributed to skill biased technical change sbtc associated with new computer technologies we review the evidence for this hypothesis focusing on the implications of sbtc for overall wage inequality and for changes in wage differentials between groups a key problem for the sbtc hypothesis is that wage inequality stabilized in the 1990s despite continuing advances in computer technology sbtc also fails to explain the evolution of other dimensions of wage inequality including the gender and racial wage gaps and the age gradient in the return to education

staying on in full time education the educational participation rate of 16 year olds this paper presents a time series analysis of the socioeconomic factors influencing the propensity of sixteen year olds to stay on in full time education in england and wales the econometric methodology employed relies on cointegration and general to specific techniques the results suggest that the main factors influencing staying on are the rate of return to education changing social class structure unemployment rates and the introduction of special employment and training measures such as the youth training scheme copyright 1991 by the london school of economics and political science

unemployment and early school leaving theoretical predictions about the effect of unemployment on school leaving are ambiguous unemployment might affect the decision to leave school in a number of different ways i current youth unemployment a higher probability of current unemployment for those who choose to leave school would tend to discourage early school leaving first by reducing the expected gains from job search a discouraged worker effect and second by reducing the opportunity cost of additional education ii expected future unemployment the theoretical predictions here are less clear cut an increase in the probability of future unemployment that affected both those with and without additional education would tend to reduce the rate of return to education and hence education demand on the other hand those with more education may be less affected by rises in unemployment and this may encourage further schooling these two opposing effects have been formalised as a shift and a tilt in the unemployment probability schooling relationship kodde i988 fig i suggests that in the united kingdom both effects could have accompanied the transition from the late 1970s to the i98o the full effects of uncertainty on education investment in a two period model depend on the correlation between the uncertainty in the two periods levhari and weiss 1974 how current unemployment rates are used to form expectations of future unemployment is clearly an important issue here also some individuals may be able to undertake job search before committing themselves to leave school and whilst affected by the risk of future unemployment may be comparatively unaffected by the risk of current unemployment iii effects ofparental unemployment parents unemployment in general reduces family income their children s educational demand may fall as a consequence for three reasons first the consumption demand for education will be lower second a reduction in the first period income reduces the investment demand for education assuming decreasing absolute risk aversion kodde i 988

effects of the minimum wage on the employment status of youths an update the large decline in the relative value of the minimum wage during the 1980s makes that period a valuable one for identifying the impact of variation in the minimum wage on youth employment this study produces the robust finding that when the experience of the 1980s is included a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage is estimated to reduce teen employment by less than 1 percent the lower end of the range of previous estimates because this small employment effect is offset by a labor force withdrawal effect the study finds no discernible effect on measured unemployment the study also finds no apparent effect of the minimum wage on the employment of young adults aged 20 24

birth order schooling and earnings birth order effects are posited by many to affect earnings and schooling we show how such effects can be interpreted to shift either the earnings possibility frontier for siblings or parental preferences we find empirical evidence for birth order effects on age adjusted schooling and on earnings for young u s adults though the latter is not robust for all specifications the examination of intrahousehold allocations suggests that these birth order differences occur despite parental preferences or prices by birth order favoring later borns apparently because of stronger endowment effects that favor firstborns

common persistence in conditional variances since the introduction of the autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic arch model in engle 1982 numerous applications of this modeling strategy have already appeared a common finding in many of these studies with high frequency financial or monetary data concerns the presence of an approximate unit root in the autoregressive polynomial in the univariate time series representation for the conditional second order moments of the process as in the so called integrated generalized arch igarch class of models proposed in engle and bollerslev 1986 in the igarch models shocks to the conditional variance are persistent in the sense that they remain important for forecasts of all horizons this idea is readily extended to a multivariate framework even though many time series may exhibit persistence in variance it is likely that several different variables share the same common long run component in that situation the variables are naturally defined to be co persistent in variance and the co persistent linear combination is interpretable as a long run relationship conditions for co persistence to occur in the multivariate linear garch model are presented these conditions parallel the conditions for linear co integration in the mean as developed by engle and granger 1987 the presence of co persistence has important implications for asset pricing relationships and in optimal portfolio allocation decisions an empirical example relating to the time series properties of nominal u s dollar exchange rates for the deutschemark and the british pound provides a simple illustration of the ideas

coordination cooperation contagion and currency crises we analyze the effect of trade competition international coordination and cooperation on currency crises to do this we present a micro founded model where governments have an incentive to devalue to increase the national market share in a monopolistically competitive sector currency crises generated by self fulfilling expectations are possible because private agents demand high wages when they expect a devaluation this decreases the competitiveness and profits of national firms and induces the government to devalue we show that the more important trade competition the more likely self fulfilling speculative crises are and the larger the set of multiple equilibria coordination decreases the possibility of simultaneous self fulfilling speculative crises in the region and reduces the set of multiple equilibria however regional coordination even though welfare improving makes countries more dependent on other countries fundamentals so that it may induce more contagion cooperation further reduces the set of multiple equilibria with currency crises

choice at sixteen the proportion of sixteen year olds in britain who stay on at school is low by oecd standards this paper examines the probability of completing education at the minimum legal age using micro data on individuals parameter estimates of a reduced form logit model of the leaving probability are obtained for both boys and girls the rich data set used allows the separate effects of family school and ability to be assessed family background in the form of class and parental education is shown to have a large effect even when ability and school type are controlled for copyright 1989 by the london school of economics and political science

modelling the transition from school and the demand for training in the united kingdom this paper analyses the choices made by school leavers and the demand for training in the youth labour market using a large cross section database on all school leavers in lancashire in 1991 we model using a multinomial logit their first destination six months after the end of compulsory schooling we model six choices outcomes non vocational continuing education vocational continuing education youth training employment with on the job training employment with general skills training and unemployment our results show that the first destination from school is affected by a range of individual school and local labour market variables in addition to academic ability we report three effects that are not well known a young person is more likely to leave school the bigger the school the lower its academic performance and the lower his or her expected lifetime earnings our results might be interpreted as evidence of a segmented youth labour market it is also inappropriate to model the decision to stay on in continuing education as a simple binary choice

do recessions keep students in school the impact of youth unemployment on enrolment in post compulsory education in england in this paper i assess the impact of the youth labour market on enrolment in post compulsory education to that end i construct data for a panel of english regions and identify youth labour market effects using variation in youth unemployment rates across regions and over time my estimates suggest that the youth labour market has large enrolment impacts at least twice as large as suggested by uk estimates based on time series data this helps to explain why enrolment growth slowed down from the mid 1990s and suggests that a weakening youth labour market could cause enrolment to increase again

strategic control of growth in a system of cities abstract this paper provides an analysis of the supply restriction model of growth controls growth controls in such a model harm consumers while enriching landowners and they will only be adopted if landowners have political power in the model this power is manifested in the city government s use of a social welfare that takes both landlord and consumer welfare into account since cities cannot be small if the supply restriction inherent in growth controls is to have an impact strategic interactions must be considered in the analysis of city choices a general model is presented and an extended example based on leontief preferences is then considered comparative static analysis of nash equilibria in the leontief case shows that perturbations of preferences or other characteristics of a single city can have important spillover effects that alter the choices of all cities in the region

technology and the wage structure this article reports direct evidence on how technological change is related to changes in wage gaps by schooling experience and gender wage gaps by schooling increased the most in industries with rising r d intensity and accelerating growth in the capital labor ratio estimates of their relationship to high tech capital are inconclusive contrary to popular notions that technological change harms older workers wage growth of experienced workers is much greater in r d intensive industries than in industries with little r d activity the gender gap narrowed more in industries that most intensively used high tech capital in 1979

distributive politics ward representation and the spread of zoning this analysis examines two alternative explanations for the adoption of comprehensive zoning ordinances in the years immediately following its initial adoption in new york city the market failure explanation predicts zoning adoption in cities where externality problems represented by heavy incidence of manufacturing exist the distributive policymaking model treats zoning as a form of regulation that is most likely to be found in cities where local legislators are elected from geographically concentrated constituencies e g wards and therefore try to target policy benefits to their own constituencies while spreading the policy costs over all constituencies some support is found for each model especially striking is the interactive effect of ward representation and of economic interest i e levels of home ownership

household income dynamics a four country story in this article we analyse the dynamics of household per capita incomes using longitudinal data from indonesia south africa spain and venezuela we find that in all four countries reported initial income and job changes of the head are consistently the most important variables in accounting for income changes overall and for initially poor households we also find that changes in income are more important than changes in household size and that changes in labour earnings are more important than changes in other sources of household income

computer use and wages evidence from taiwan we find a significant positive relationship between computer use and wages using taiwan microdata controlling for endogeneity of computer use with simultaneous equations suggests that although ols estimates are biased upward workplace computer use increases productivity d 2003 elsevier b v all rights reserved

budget spillovers and fiscal policy interdependence evidence from the states abstract this paper formalizes and tests the notion that states expenditures depend on the spending of similarly situated states we find that even after allowing for fixed state effects year effects and common random shocks among neighbors a state government s level of per capita expenditure is positively and significantly affected by the expenditure levels of its neighbors ceteris paribus a one dollar increase in a state s neighbors expenditures increases its own expenditure by over 70 cents

bargaining in the shadow of the ballot box causes and consequences of local voter initiatives this paper provides one of the first empirical analyses of the local voter initiative using a unique and comprehensive dataset from california it analyzes determinants of local initiatives and effects of these measures on municipal finances results indicate that initiatives occur more frequently in large and diverse jurisdictions with more recent movers voters unaffiliated with a major political party and public employees effects of city size are partly offset by district or ward level elections contrary to previous research on statewide initiatives this study detects a positive and weakly significant relationship between local initiative use and own source revenues per capita and no association between initiatives and the proportion of funds raised from fees these divergent findings may reflect distinctive features of the local context including greater latitude for political bargaining and the centrality of land use as well as potential constraining effects of statewide initiatives in california

computers skills and wages computer technology is most prominently used by skilled high wage workers this suggests that computer use requires skills to take full advantage of the possibilities which are particularly present among relatively skilled workers this article develops a simple technology adoption model showing that the decision to adopt computer technology depends on i the tasks to be performed ii the level of skill or education and iii the level of wages applying this model to british data it is shown that the effect of wages and particular tasks on computer adoption is larger than the effect of skills on adoption the estimates suggest that in britain computer use is likely to be a matter of cost efficiency and not so much of workers skills

computerisation and wage dispersion an analytical reinterpretation the rich countries have recently seen a dramatic rise in income inequality all the more surprising because the long term trend had been toward equality this paper examines one of the leading explanations computerisation in the workplace i offer a theory of computers impact on white collar work which goes far toward explaining the timing form and locus of recent labour market changes the theory looks at the bureaucratic and organisational applications of computers that have been first largest and most influential they have two effects on firms demand for labour at different skill levels

levels of computer self efficacy computer use and earnings in china abstract levels of self efficacy in computer use were found to be positively related to computer use at work among a sample of workers in shanghai the simultaneous estimation of computer use and earnings indicated that an earnings premium for computer use accrues only to females not to males

time series evidence of the effect of the minimum wage on youth employment and unemployment our updated estimates indicate that a 10 percent increase in the federal minimum wage or the coverage rate would reduce teenage 16 19 employment by about 1 percent which is at the lower end of the range of estimates from previous studies because of substantial labor force withdrawal the unemployment effects are practically zero these minimum wage effects differ very little by sex and there is no strong evidence that the effects vary by race the study also finds a significant albeit small unemployment impact for young adults 20 24 and examines the consequences of numerous alternative statistical and mathematical specifications of the estimating model

what happens when agent t gets a computer the labor market impact of cost efficient computer adoption this paper offers a model of how computer technology has changed the labor market demonstrating that wage differentials between computer users and non users are consistent with computers first being introduced in high wage jobs following cost efficiency furthermore skill upgrading occurs following a reemphasis on non routine tasks after adoption the model also reveals that neither differences in computer skills nor complementary skills are needed to explain wage differentials between users and non users skill upgrading and the changing organization and intensity of work finally the predicted effects on the wage structure are consistent with empirical evidence

the failure of input based schooling policies in an effort to improve the quality of schools governments around the world have dramatically increased the resources devoted to them by concentrating on inputs and ignoring the incentives within schools the resources have yielded little in the way of general improvement in student achievement this paper provides a review of the us and international evidence on the effectiveness of such input policies it then contrasts the impact of resources with that of variations in teacher quality that are not systematically related to school resources finally alternative performance incentive policies are described

ict and productivity growth in the united kingdom this paper develops new estimates of investment in and output of information and communication technology ict these new estimates imply that gdp growth has been significantly understated particularly since 1994 a growth accounting approach is employed to measure the contribution of ict to the growth of both aggregate output and aggregate input on both counts the contribution of ict has been rising over time from 1989 to 1998 ict output contributed a fifth of overall gdp growth since 1989 55 per cent of capital deepening the growth of capital per hour worked has been contributed by ict capital since 1994 this proportion has risen to 90 per cent ict capital deepening accounts for 25 per cent of the growth of labour productivity over 1989 98 and 48 per cent over 1994 8 but even when output growth is adjusted for the new ict estimates both labour productivity and tfp growth are still found to slow down after 1994

a model of electroral competition with interest groups abstract this letter specifies and analyzes a model of electoral competition with interest groups the assumptions used in the model are drawn from the existing literature we i show that certain assumptions that have been used in empirical analyses of voting provide a sufficient condition for the existence of an electoral equilibrium and ii characterize the equilibrium strategies embodied in the characterization is a set of parameters that can be said to measure the electoral strengths of the interest groups we also state the appropriate definition of the pareto relation for our model and note that each of the equilibrium strategies is pareto optimal

explaining the vote for slow growth a model of equilibrium rent determination is developed to incorporate both the scarcity and amenity effects associated with limits to new housing construction in a non open city where demand for housing has increased implications of the model are tested with data from california cities to determine which factors increase the probability that a local growth control ballot measure is proposed or passed it is found that limits to new housing development occur with greater frequency in communities where fewer substitute cities exist and where certain socioeconomic characteristics predominate but not where current population densities or growth are high

estimation and testing of the union wage effect using panel data we present estimates of the union wage effect controlling for unmeasured individual effects and subject the conventional fixed effects model to specification tests for psid men the union wage effect is 5 8 after controlling for person effects as opposed to 20 in cross section omnibus tests based on an unrestricted reduced form and instrumental variables tests based on differencing are consistent with conventional models tests based on comparing those who enter and leave union coverage provide evidence against the usual model we find evidence for interactions between union status and other variables even after controlling for person effects

endogeneity computers language skills and wages among university graduates in vietnam one would expect that returns to supplementary skills in developing countries are considerably higher compared to those documented for developed countries as is the case with returns to schooling i derive estimates of returns to the use of computer and foreign language skills in vietnam after controlling for endogeneity using a binary instrument hypothesized to reflect reconstruction doi moi policies in vietnam i find that a the use of both computers and language skills is associated with very large earnings premiums b iv return estimates are as high as and sometimes higher than ols estimates however they should be interpreted in relation to the instrument used

computers and the changing skill intensity of jobs this paper investigates the impact of computer usage at work and other job features on the changing skills required of workers it compare skills utilization in britain at three data points 1986 1992 and 1997 using proxies for the level of skills actually used in jobs this study questions the validity of investigating the facts about and the sources of rising skills by using just educational attainment or occupational grouping data this paper finds that job skills have increased more quickly for women than for men these increases are more extensive than those captured by changes in the occupational class structure the spread of computer usage is very strongly associated with the process of upskilling and accounts in part for narrowing of the gender skills gap expanded use of quality circles is also linked to upskilling evidence for any direct role of trade in inducing skills increases is weak using the qualification held or occupation as a skills measure can lead to erroneous conclusions as to the origin of skills changes

an empirical analysis of the unemployment duration of school leavers unemployment is a waste of vaulable human resources which also imposes various economics medical and psychological costs on the individual these costs are likely to be greater the longer the duration of umemployment this is true for both prime aged workers and the youngest entrants to the labour market that is school leavers using careers service data on 1979 1980 and 1981 leavers the authors seek to shed light on the issue of what factors determine the duration of unemployment for minimum aged school leavers the way in which these factors can be used by the careers service to identify those school leavers who have a higher risk of long term unemployment is discussed and a number of strategies for helping this group are outlined the results show that after allowing for the distorting influence of the youth opportunities programme longer durations of unemployment are associated with an absence of work experience low to intermediate qualifications and other personality traits

new technologies wages and worker selection we study the effect of new technologies nt on wages and employment using a unique panel that matches data on individuals and on their firms as in the united states we show that computer users are better paid than nonusers 15 20 more but these workers were already better compensated before the introduction of the nts total returns to computer use amount to 2 measurement errors do not affect our estimates furthermore computer users are protected from job losses as long as bad business conditions do not last too long this result holds even after controlling for possible selection biases

the returns to the quantity and quality of education evidence for men in england and wales until the late 1960s state schooling in england and wales was determined by an ability test of pupils at age 11 which had an effect on both the quantity and quality of education by estimating the relationship between earnings and earlier schooling during a period when school areas changed from selective to non selective education we consider how the returns to the quantity of education are confounded by differences in the quality of schooling and whether the effects of quality are confounded by its correlation with quantity our results confirm recent evidence that returns to education quantity are large and quality effects are small

a model of female labour supply in which supply is dependent upon the chances of finding a job in this paper we extend a model of female labour supply by considering the impact of the local labour market thus in our model a woman supplies her labour if she has both made the decision to participate and found a job this extension is of particular importance in times of high unemployment when discouraged worker effects will be at their strongest we also consider the contribution of such a model to the debate concerning the labour supply of women married to men who are unemployed

decentralisation as an incentive scheme recent changes have introduced more decentralization in a number of traditionally centralized countries 1 in the case of france it is sometimes claimed that the 1982 1983 reform of subcentral government is of historical importance although the principles of that reform are not contested any more by the new majority elected in 1986 opinions still differ on a number of policy issues some of the issues are presented in this introductory section but the main purpose of this paper is not to expose or discuss in detail the problems of decentralization in france as argued in the second part of the introductory section the theoretical framework in which the policy issues of decentralization are usually discussed by economists is somewhat unsatisfactory in particular when applied to unitary states such as britain or france the bulk of the paper is devoted to the exploration of a different approach to decentralization it is not purported however that this approach could completely replace the more traditional one consequently when in the concluding section we return briefly to the policy issues identified here this is to be read as a preliminary attempt to evaluate the relevance of the reasoning developed in the paper

anticipated effects of the minimum wage on prices there is little empirical evidence on the effect of minimum wage increases on prices particularly for developing countries this paper provides estimates of this effect using monthly brazilian household and firm data over 18 years as minimum wage increases in brazil sare large and frequent they have a potentially important impact on aggregate prices rational agents in anticipation of such price effects may take minimum wage increases as a signal for future price and wage bargains we find that the minimum wage raises overall prices not only on the month of the increase but also in the two months prior to the change as well as after the change

the effects of human resource management on small firms productivity and employees wages this paper analyses whether employees and firms differently benefit from particular human resource hr practices the focus is on small firms that may be badly informed on the impact of hr practices on firm performance in this study on dutch pharmacies it is found that firms do not reward employees skills according to their contribution to firms productivity as 1 employees are over rewarded for their sector specific skills and under rewarded for the productivity enhancing effect of their computer skills and 2 employees work experience positively affects their wages but does not have real productivity effects moreover it is found that training employees in case of vacancy problems seems to be an adequate hr practice since it increases productivity without affecting the average wage level the opposite holds for offering higher wages to newly recruited employees furthermore we find that only the employees benefit from performance evaluation interviews whereas employing many employees by tem

testing for strategic interaction among local governments the case of growth controls this paper helps to fill a gap in the public economics literature by providing empirical evidence on strategic interaction among local governments using the methodology of case et al journal of public economics 52 285 307 1993 the paper focuses on the adoption of growth control measures by cities in california and looks for evidence of policy interdependence in these choices the data are drawn from an elaborate survey of growth control practices in california cities conducted by glickfeld and levine regional growth local reaction lincoln institute of land policy cambridge ma 1992 the survey results are used to compute an index of the stringency of growth controls in each city which serves as the dependent variable for the study

an empirical analysis of occupational expectations empirical research on the subject area of occupational choice has generally focused upon outcomes that is in terms of occupational attainment gender and racial segmentation and male female earnings differentials but individual preferences in terms of which occupation to pursue are likely to be of equal importance in considering many of these issues therefore this paper is concerned with an empirical analysis of the occupational expectations of minimum aged school leavers a logit analysis is performed to establish what independent variables are more important in determining which labour queue school leavers join this is followed by the implications of the analysis for policy makers and practitioners concerned with the youth labour market the evidence shows that there are clear differences in the occupational expectations of males and females for instance female school leavers are more likely to seek entry to clerical and other non manual occupations such as retailing and catering males on

make money surfing the web the impact of internet use on the earnings of u s workers much research on the digital divide presumes that adults who do not use the internet are economically disadvantaged yet little research has tested this premise after discussing several mechanisms that might produce differences in earnings growth between workers who do and do not use the internet we use data from the current population survey to examine the impact of internet use on changes in earnings over 13 month intervals at the end of the internet boom our analyses reveal robustly significant positive associations between web use and earnings growth indicating that some skills and behaviors associated with internet use were rewarded by the labor market consistent with human capital theory current use at work had the strongest effect on earnings in contrast to economic theory which has led economists to focus exclusively on effects of contemporaneous workplace technology use workers who used the internet only at home also did better suggesting that users may have benefited from superior

incumbent behavior vote seeking tax setting and yardstick competition this paper develops a model of the political economy of tax setting in a multijurisdictional world where voters choices and incumbent behavior are determined simultaneously voters are assumed to make comparisons between jurisdictions to overcome political agency problems this forces incumbents into a yardstick competition in which they care about what other incumbents are doing we provide a theoretical framework and empirical evidence using u s state data from 1960 to 1988 the results are encouraging to the view that vote seeking and tax setting are tied together through the nexus of yardstick competition

the minimum wage and teenage employment a reanalysis with attention to serial correlation and seasonality we examine the effects of minimum wage legislation in canada over the period 1975 93 for teenagers we find that a 10 increase in the minimum wage is associated with roughly a 2 5 decrease in employment we also find that this result is driven by low

skill biased technological change and wage inequality evidence from a plant retooling1 one of the most popular explanations for the increased wage inequality that has occurred since the late 1970s is that technological change has resulted in a downward shift in the demand for low skill workers this pattern is also alleged to account for the growth in racial inequality in wages over the same period this article reports on a case study of the retooling of a food processing plant a unique longitudinal multimethod design reveals the nature of the technological change the changes in job requirements and the mechanisms by which the changes affect the wage distribution for hourly production workers this research finds that indeed the retooling resulted in greater wage dispersion and that the changes have also been associated with greater racial inequality in wages however contrary to the claims of advocates of the skill bias hypothesis organizational and human resources factors strongly mediated the impact of the changing technology absent these high road organizational choices th

education and earnings in the netherlands an empirical analysis abstract in this paper three models which describe the relation between earnings and education are estimated using one single data set one model is a simple dummy regression model in which the educational variables are exogenous both other models take account of the fact that individuals choose their optimal amount of education and is therefore endogenous in all three models i try to specify the equations in the same way as others have done with other data sets it turns out that in each model important conclusions reached in earlier research are not supported by the empirical findings reported here

clean money dirty system connected landowners capture beneficial land rezoning we use a unique regulatory event that occurred in queensland australia from 2007 to 2012 to examine the predictive power of landowner relationship networks and lobbying behaviour on successfully gaining value enhancing rezoning a state authority the urban land development authority ulda took planning control away from local councils in selected areas in order to increase the speed and scale of development in those areas in the process increasing land values using micro level relationship data from multiple sources we compare the relationship network characteristics of landowners of comparable sites inside and outside the ulda areas finding that connected landowners owned 75 of land inside the rezoned areas and only 12 outside capturing 410 million in land value gains out of the total 710 million from rezoning we also find that engaging a professional lobbyist is a substitute for having one s own connections scaling up from our sample of six rezoned areas to the hundreds of rezoning decisions across queensland and australia in the last few decades suggests that many billions of dollars of economic rent are being regularly transferred from the general population to connected landowners through political rezoning decisions

regional rates of return to education and training in britain bennett r glennerster h and nevison d 1995 regional rates of return to education and training in britain reg studies 29 279 295 using a structural utility maximizing human capital model of the post 16 education and training decision the paper explores rates of return and lifetime earnings that might influence an individual s decision to participate in post compulsory education and training the paper presents ex ante regional rates of return to post 16 further and higher education using information from the general household survey in britain based on the empirical results implications for education and training policy are drawn the model demonstrates that there are important differences between expected rates of return to the same qualification in different regions these returns are influenced by the regional labour market and are likely to have important influences on the incentives of individuals to pursue education or to train the paper also demonstrates the generally low level of diff

the returns to computer use revisited have pencils changed the wage structure too are the large measured wage differentials for on the job computer use a true return to computer skills or do they just reflect that higher wage workers use computers on their jobs we examine this issue with three large cross sectional surveys from germany first we confirm that the estimated wage differential associated with computer use in germany is very similar to the u s differential second we also measure large differentials for on the job use of calculators telephones pens or pencils or for those who work while sitting down we argue that these findings cast some doubt on the literal interpretation of the computer use wage differential as reflecting true returns to computer use or skill

the diffusion of computers and the distribution of wages abstract when the costs are decreasing workers adopt technology at the point where the costs equal the increased productivity output per worker increases immediately while productivity benefits increase only gradually if costs continue to fall as a result workers in computer adopting labor market groups experience an immediate fall in wages due to increased supply on the other hand adopting workers experience wage increases with some delay this model explains why increased computer use does not immediately lead to higher wage inequality more specifically the results of the model are shown to be consistent with the question why within group wage inequality among skilled workers as a result of computer technology adoption in the united states increased in the 1970s while between group wage inequality and within group wage inequality among the unskilled did not start to increase until the 1980s the model also predicts that the more compressed german wage structure leads to a lagged diffusion of computer technology along with smaller changes in wage inequality our empirical analysis suggests that this is consistent with the actual developments in germany since the 1980s finally the theoretical predictions seem to be of the right magnitude to explain the empirical quantities observed in the data

stationary data and the effect of the minimum wage on teenage employment one of the interesting features of time series work on the effect of the minimum wage is that the problem of possible spurious regressions when data may be non stationary has been largely ignored it is shown that this is potentially a serious problem it is found that although the teenage employment to population ratio is stationary the independent variables in time series regression equations are non stationary substitution of the stationary first differences of the independent variables in the regression equations for their levels is found to greatly undermine the estimated influence of the minimum wage on the employment to population ratio estimates of the effect of the minimum wage are found to be only marginally more significant when seasonal differencing of the dependent variable and an arch estimation technique are employed

the impact of advanced technology adoption on wage structures evidence from taiwan manufacturing firms we examine the impact of advanced technology adoption on wage and employment structures in taiwan using a survey of manufacturing firms that provides direct information on the use of advanced technologies we find that firms using more advanced technologies pay higher wages to both non production and production workers and employ higher fractions of non production workers controlling for the possible endogeneity of technology adoption suggests that the estimated impact of new technologies on wages is downward biased and that the effect on production workers wages may be minimal

returns from computer use a simple test on the productivity interpretation abstract this paper finds that returns from computer use do not vary with the intensity of computer use this is evidence against the productivity interpretation of these returns and supports the view that returns from computer use can be attributed to unobserved heterogeneity

does unmeasured ability explain the higher wages of new technology workers abstract we study the impact on new technologies nt on wages using a unique data set that matches data on individuals and on their firms in his important article on the same topic krueger 1993 did not give a definitive answer to the following question if workers who use nt are better paid is it because they are abler or because nt increases their productivity we try to provide a precise answer to this question comparing cross section estimates firm effect estimates and person effect estimates we show that computer based new technologies are used by abler workers these workers appear to become more productive when they get more experienced with these nt in terms of wage differentials the introduction of computer based nt contributes to the increase but less than supposed before each year experience with computer based nt adds around 1 to the wage of workers using such techniques