Recently, Galí and others have found that technological progress may be contractionary: a favorable technology shock reduces hours worked in the short run. We ask whether this observation is robust in disaggregate data. According to our VAR analysis of 458 four-digit U.S. manufacturing...

We empirically analyse the response of US manufacturing labour market variables to various shocks, notably to trade openness and technology. The econometric approach involves an application of the recently developed global VAR (GVAR) methodology of Dees, DiMauro, Pesaran, and Smith (2005) to 12...

Our answer: Not so well. We reached that conclusion after reviewing recent research on the role of technology as a source of economic fluctuations. The bulk of the evidence suggests a limited role for aggregate technology shocks, pointing instead to demand factors as the main force behind the...

In a market-clearing labor market model, cointegration arises between labor services, real wages, and I(1) technology shocks with two cointegrating vectors in the error correction VAR from the market. Using patent data to measure technology shocks, patents are found to be I(1), they are...

This paper investigates the shift in demand towards skilled labor in U.S. manufacturing. Between 1979 and 1989. employment of production workers in manufacturing dropped by 2.2 mil1ion or 15 percent while employment of non-production workers rose by 3 percent. A decomposition of changing...