The present analysis investigates skill requirements in the workplace, measured directly by the task-composition of occupations. It shows that the task composition of occupations has shifted toward analytical and interactive activities and away from manual and cognitive routine activities in...

Based on a large data set containing information on occupations between 1979 and 1999, this study explores the ?black box? surrounding the skill?biased technological change hypothesis by analyzing the mechanisms that induce information technologies to be complementary to employees with higher...

This paper examines the relationship between the use of advanced technologies such as ICT, and outcomes such as productivity, the skill mix of the workforce and wages using micro data for the U.S. and Germany. We find support to the idea that U.S. businesses engage in experimentation in a...

The question of the spatial impacts of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has animated the intellectual and policy debate for a long time. At the beginning of the 1990s the rise of the Internet brought a new surge of debate: it was argued that the Internet would free the economy...

This empirical paper analyses the importance of information and communications technologies (ICT) in the technological diversification trend among the world's largest manufacturing firms during the 1980s and 1990s. The objective of the research is twofold: firstly, to emphasise the emerging...

This paper explores how firms' skills and organizational change affect the returns from investments in ICT. Our work contributes to the literature by testing the hypothesis of complementarity in a panel of 540 Italian manufacturing firms during 1995-2000. By drawing on different statistical...

To identify the determinants of cross-country disparities in personal computer and Internet penetration, we examine a panel of 161 countries over the 1999-2001 period. Our candidate variables include economic variables (income per capita, years of schooling, illiteracy, trade openness),...

Computer and Internet use, especially in developing countries, has expanded rapidly in recent years. Even in light of this expansion in technology adoption rates, penetration rates differ markedly between developed and developing countries and across developing countries. To identify the...

General purpose technologies (GPT) have a significant impact on economic activity through radical technological change and wide technological diffusion. This paper aims to address the generality of technologies associated with the GPT concept. Information and communications technologies (ICT),...

We analyse the role of training in mitigating the negative impact of technical and organizational changes on the employment prospects of older workers. Using a panel of French firms in the late 1990s, we first estimate wage bill share equations for different age groups. Consistently with what is...