We study preferences for government action in response to layoffs resulting from different types of labor-market shocks. We consider the following shocks: technological change, a demand shift, bad management, and three kinds of international outsourcing. Respondents are given a choice among no...

Our answer: not so well. We reach that conclusion after reviewing recent research on the role of technology as a source of economic fluctuations. The bulk of the evidence suggests a limited role for aggregate technology shocks, pointing instead to demand factors as the main force behind the...

European economic growth has been weak, compared to the US, since the 80s. In previous work (Krueger and Kumar, 2003), we argued that the European focus on specialized, vocational education might have been effective during the 60s and 70s, but resulted in a growth gap relative to the US during...

This paper presents a model in which a partially anticipated technological shock results, in the short-run, in lower investment and higher unemployment. Because of the expectation of future lower profits, the market value of existing firms --and the wages they pay-- decrease before the...

This paper examines the effect of technological change and other factors on the relative demand for workers with different education levels and on the recent growth of U.S. educational wage differentials. A simple supply-demand framework is used to interpret changes in the relative quantities,...

Using data for the G7 countries, I estimate conditional correlations of employment and productivity, based on a decomposition of the two series into technology and non-technology components. The picture that emerges is hard to reconcile with the predictions of the standard Real Business Cycle...

In this paper, we exploit plant-level data for U.S. manufacturing for the 1970s and 1980s to explore the connections between changes in technology and the structure of employment and wages. We focus on the nonproduction labor share (measured alternatively by employment and wages) as the variable...

Arguably the most important development in recent decades in US factor markets is the decline in the relative wage of the unskilled. By contrast, in Europe it is undoubtedly the rise and persistence of unemployment. Technology has been identified as a key reason for the rising US wage...

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...