To what extent have economies become better off because of the diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICT)? We analyze this question based on a growth accounting approach at the level of final output. This approach traces productivity improvements not within sectors but within...

The past four decades have witnessed dramatic changes in the structure of employment. In particular, the rapid increase in computational power has led to large-scale reductions in employment in jobs that can be described as intensive in routine tasks. These jobs have been shown to be...

We examine how changes in task content over time condition occupational wage development. Using survey data from Germany, we document substantial heterogeneity in within-occupational changes in task content. Combining this evidence with administrative data on individual employment outcomes over...

The study explores to what extent adaptation to digital change has affected regional employment growth and regional disparities in Germany over the past decade. Using data from administrative sources the analysis finds no evidence for a net decline in employment in connection with technological...

Using a large panel data set of German manufacturing establishments, this paper investigates the impact of competition on training incidence as well as on the number of trained workers. According to theory, one would expect a negative relationship between product market competition and firms'...

This paper investigates the transferability of human capital across countries and the contribution of imperfect human capital portability to the explanation of the immigrant-native wage gap. Using data for West Germany, our results reveal that, overall, education and labor market experience...

Bovenberg and Jacobs (2005) and Richter (2009) derive the education effi ciency theorem: In a second-best optimum, the education decision is undistorted if the function expressing the stock of human capital features a constant elasticity with respect to education. I drop this assumption. The...

This paper studies a Ramsey optimal taxation model with human capital in an infinite-horizon setting. Contrary to Jones, Manuelli, and Rossi (1997), the human capital production function does not include the current stock of human capital as a production factor. As a result, the return to human...

In this paper we investigate how fertility decisions respond to unexpected career interruptions which occur as a consequence of job displacement. Using an event study approach we compare the birth rates of displaced women with those of women unaffected by job loss after establishing the...

Using the location of baroque opera houses as a natural experiment, Falck et al. (2011) claim to document a positive causal effect of the supply of cultural goods on today's regional distribution of talents. This paper raises serious doubts on the validity of the identification strategy...