Skill biased financial development
Subtitle: education, wages and occupations in the U. S. financial sector
By: Thomas Philippon, Ariell Reshef.
Contributors: Reshef, Ariell.; National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series -- no. 13437.; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research) -- working paper no. 13437.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 27
Subjects: Banks and banking -- United States -- Mathematical models
Description: Over the past 60 years, the U.S. financial sector has grown from 2.3% to 7.7% of GDP. While the growth in the share of value added has been fairly linear, it hides a dramatic change in the composition of skills and occupations. In the early 1980s, the financial sector started paying higher wages and hiring more skilled individuals than the rest of economy. These trends reflect a shift away from low-skill jobs and towards market-oriented activities within the sector. Our evidence suggests that technological and financial innovations both played a role in this transformation. We also document an increase in relative wages, controlling for education, which partly reflects an increase in unemployment risk: Finance jobs used to be safer than other jobs in the private sector, but this is not longer the case.
Notes: "September 2007"

Includes bibliographical references (p. 26-27).

Also available in PDF from the NBER world wide web site (www.nber.org).