US earnings inequality has increased dramatically since the 1970s, and the prospect of a reversal depends on what caused the trend. The standard explanation emphasizes skill-biased technical change. This paper briefly considers some aggregation issues and then proceeds to outline two alternative...

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...

We perform decompositions and regression analyses that test the routinization hypothesis and implied job polarization at the firm level. Prior studies have focused on the aggregate, industry or local levels. Our results for the abstract and routine occupation groups are consistent with the...

The impact of ICT capital accumulation and digitisation on labour demand and wage structures has changed in recent years, according to some of the literature on the subject. We analyse the impact of ICT capital accumulation based on recent data differentiating between the period before and after...

The digital transformation imposes both opportunities and risks for creativity and for creative employment, with implications for trends in income levels and the distribution of income. First, we consider skill-biased technological change as a determinant of income and labor market outcomes in...

We review the empirical literature about the implications of the computerization of the labor market to see whether it can explain observed computer adoption patterns and (long-term) changes in the wage structure. Evidence from empirical micro studies turns out to be inconsistent with macro...

This paper argues that endogenous restructuring processes within firms towards non-routine tasks like autonomous problem-solving and other analytical activities, triggered by advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) and rising supply of educated workers, are associated with...

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...

We investigate how workers adjust to firms' investments into new digital technologies, including artificial intelligence, augmented reality, or 3D printing. For this, we collected novel data that links survey information on firms' technology adoption to administrative social security data. We...