This paper examines the evolution of female labor market outcomes from 1987 to 2008 by assessing the role of changing labor demand requirements in four developing countries: Brazil, Mexico, India and Thailand. The results highlight the importance of structural change in reducing gender...

After a decade in which wages and employment fell precipitously in low-skill occupations and expanded in high-skill occupations, the shape of U.S. earnings and job growth sharply polarized in the 1990s. Employment shares and relative earnings rose in both low and high-skill jobs, leading to a...

We offer an integrated explanation and empirical analysis of the polarization of U.S. employment and wages between 1980 and 2005, and the concurrent growth of low skill service occupations. We attribute polarization to the interaction between consumer preferences, which favor variety over...

We use the individual-level data on income and education level from the EU-SILC database to investigate the trends in income distribution and wage polarization in the EU New Member States. We do not confirm the existence of job polarization in wages and employment that has been observed in the...

In this paper, I study technological change as a candidate for the observed increase in consumption inequality in the United States. I build an incomplete market model with educational choice combined with a task-based model on the production side. I consider two channels through which...

Does adoption of broadband internet in firms enhance labor productivity and increase wages? And is this technological change skill biased or factor neutral? We exploit rich Norwegian data with firm-level information on value added, factor inputs and broadband adoption to answer these questions....

As the pace of digitalization and automation accelerates globally, and more disruptive innovations in machine learning, artificial intelligence and robotics are expected, new data sources and measurement tools are needed to complement existing valuable statistics and administrative data. This is...

This paper empirically tests the hypothesis that landed elites may block technological change and economic development if they fear that they will lose future political power (Acemoglu and Robinson (2002, 2006, and 2012). It exploits a plausible exogenous change in the distribution of political...

Due to scarcity considerations an increase in the supply of college graduates should reduce the premium for this kind of qualification. Therefore it seems quite contradictory that a tremendous educational expansion in the USA is accompanied by rising wage dispersion (overall and between...

This paper uses the task-based view of technological change to study employment and wage polarization at the level of local labor markets in Germany between 1979 and 2007. In order to directly relate technological change to subsequent employment trends, we exploit variation in the regional task...