When workers adopt technology at the point where the costs equal the increased productivity, output per worker increases immediately, while the productivity benefits increase only gradually if the costs continue to fall. As a result, workers in computer-adopting labor market groups experience an...

In this paper I illustrate how the diffusion across firms of a skill-neutral technology leads to a skill-biased impact on the economy. The model identifies (i) differences in inter-firm mobility between skill groups, (ii) productivity dispersion across firms within industries, and (iii)...

Across nine transition economies, it is the young, educated, English-speaking workers with the best access to local telecommunications infrastructures who work with computers. These workers earn about 25 percent more than do workers of comparable observable skills who do not use computers....

This paper uncovers evidence on the distribution of wages in Belarus in the second half of the 1990s. The returns to education and work experience are high and stable, which is atypical for a transition country. This might be due to the pervasive role of the state in fixing wages in the dominant...

We explore the pace of increase in returns to schooling during the transition from planning to market over time across a number of Central and Eastern European countries, Russia, and China. We use metadata from 33 studies of 10 transition economies covering a period from 1975 through 2002. Our...

This paper uncovers evidence on the distribution of wages in Belarus in the second half of the 1990s. The returns to education and work experience are high and stable, which is atypical for a transition country. This might be due to the pervasive role of the state in fixing wages in the dominant...

We examine the role of potential residual revenue in determining the pay of skilled workers and enterprise directors relative to production workers in China's Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs) in the period from 1984 to 1990. The potential residual is proxied negatively by returns to scale...

Data from nine transition economies in Central and Eastern Europe are used to examine the role of computer adoption for returns to education. As in western economies, computers are adopted most heavily by young, educated, English-speaking workers with the best access to local telecommunications...