To study the short-run and long-run implications on wage inequality, we introduce directed technical change into a Ricardian model of offshoring. A unique final good is produced by combining a skilled and an unskilled product, each produced from a continuum of intermediates (tasks). Some of...

This volume was prepared by Sebastian Benz while he was working at the Ifo Institute. It was completed in December 2013 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It includes five self-contained chapters. All chapters discuss different...

We study the role of increased outsourcing of production to a low wage country on relative wages across countries and innovation incentives. In particular, we examine the following causal forces behind an increase in the extent of international outsourcing: 1) a reduction in the resource...

I develop a model for a small, open, technology-lagging economy that imports leading-edge knowledge from the technology leader by paying high-skilled researchers from the leading country their opportunity cost to train the lagging country's future high-skilled workers while adding to a local...

New information and communication technologies, we argue, have been 'power-biased': they have allowed firms to monitor low-skill workers more closely, thus reducing the power of these workers. An efficiency wage model shows that 'power-biased technical change' in this sense may generate rising...

During the last decades, wage inequality in Germany has considerably increased both within and across regions. Building on concepts of the task-based approach, this paper studies whether and to what extent these developments are driven by technological change. We present novel evidence that...

What are the implications of (endogenous) directed technical change for the design of redistributive income taxes? I study this question in a Mirrleesian economy augmented to include endogenous technology development and adoption choices by firms. Under certain conditions, any progressive tax...

This paper studies the implications of (endogenously) directed technical change for the design of non-linear labor income taxes in a Mirrleesian economy augmented to include endogenous technology development and adoption choices by firms. First, I identify conditions under which any progressive...

What are the implications of (endogenous) directed technical change for the design of redistributive income taxes? I study this question in a Mirrleesian economy augmented to include endogenous technology development and adoption choices by firms. Under certain conditions, any progressive tax...