This essay discusses the effect of technical change on wage inequality. I argue that the behavior of wages and returns to schooling indicates that technical change has been skill-biased during the past sixty years. Furthermore, the recent increase in inequality is most likely due to an...

The majority of labor transactions throughout much of history and a significant fraction of such transactions in many developing countries today are "coercive", in the sense that force or the threat of force plays a central role in convincing workers to accept employment or its terms. We propose...

As robots and other computer-assisted technologies take over tasks previously performed by labor, there is increasing concern about the future of jobs and wages. We analyze the effect of the increase in industrial robot usage between 1990 and 2007 on US local labor markets. Using a model in...

In this paper, we survey non-competitive theories of training. With competitive labor markets, firms never pay for investments in general training, whereas when labor markets are imperfect, firm-sponsored training arises as an equilibrium phenomenon. We discuss a variety of evidence which...

We study the impact of AI on labor markets using establishment-level data on vacancies with detailed occupation and skill information comprising the near-universe of online vacancies in the US from 2010 onwards. There is rapid growth in AI related vacancies over 2010-2018 that is greater in...

We document a change in the character and quality of Turkish economic growth with a turning point around 2007 and link this change to the reversal in the nature of economic institutions, which underwent a series of growth-enhancing reforms following Turkey's financial crisis in 2001, but then...

This paper develops the thesis that credit market frictions may be an important contributor to high unemployment in Europe. When a change in the technological regime necessitates the creation of new firms, this can happen relatively rapidly in the U.S. where credit markets function efficiently....

In this paper, I develop a model to analyze how skill premia differ over time and across countries, and use this model to study the impact of international trade on wage inequality. Skill premia are determined by technology and the relative supply of skills. An increase in the relative supply of...