We develop an empirical framework to assess the importance of trade and technical change on the wages of production and nonproduction workers. Trade is measured by the foreign outsourcing of intermediate inputs, while technical change is measured by the shift towards high-technology capital such...

This paper investigates three hypotheses to account for the observed shifts in U.S. relative wages of less educated compared to more educated workers between 1967 and 1992: increased import competition, changes in the relative supplies of labor of different education levels and changes in...

We estimate and compare the production structures of the US, Japanese, and Korean total manufacturing sectors for the 1974-1990 period. We employ a translog variable cost function that includes such inputs as labor, materials, physical and R&D capital with the physical and R&D capital treated as...

Using an original data source, this paper investigates the circumstances under which firms adopt computer numerical control (CNC), an important type of flexible automation which can significantly increase productivity, product variety and quality. The paper shows that arms'-length...

This paper investigates the shift in demand towards skilled labor in U.S. manufacturing. Between 1979 and 1989. employment of production workers in manufacturing dropped by 2.2 mil1ion or 15 percent while employment of non-production workers rose by 3 percent. A decomposition of changing...

In this paper we construct a short run model of the firm describing the behavior of thirteen U.S. airlines during the difficult transition to deregulation. Several modeling scenarios are developed to assess three common assumptions in cost studies: the use of time as a proxy for technological...

This paper explores the relationship between technological change and inequality in the U.S. since the late 1960's. The analysis focuses primarily on studying patterns and trends in the dispersion of various distributions of earnings and income during this recent period of rapid technological...

The changes in technology that took place in the US during the last three decades, mainly due to the introduction of computerization and automation, have been characterized as "routine-substituting." They have reduced the demand for routine tasks, but have increased the demand for analytical...

Popular literature suggests a rapid narrowing of the technology gap between China and the U.S. based on large percentage increases in Chinese patent applications, and equally large increases in college registrants and completed PhDs (especially in sciences) in China in recent years. Little...

As shown in the 1930s by Hicks and Robinson the elasticity of substitution (`sigma`) is a key parameter that captures whether capital and labor are gross complements or substitutes. Establishing the magnitude of `sigma` is vital, not only for explaining changes in the distribution of income...