This paper assesses the role of technology in generating the growth of wage inequality in the 1980s and 1990s. Much of the existing literature fails to adequately address this issue for two reasons. First, most of the literature fails to examine whether technology's impact on skill demands was...

Unions suffered a modest decline in their capacity to increase wages over nonunion levels between the late 1970s and the middle 1990s according to evidence presented here. The decline in relative wages was significant in only 13 (of 78) industries examined; in 11 industries the differential...