Skill-Biased Structural Change

• 成果类型: Review
• 署名作者: Buera, Francisco J.; Kaboski, Joseph P.; Rogerson, Richard; Vizcaino, Juan, I
• 署名单位: Washington University (WUSTL); University of Notre Dame; Princeton University; University of Nottingham
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6527
• DOI: 10.1093/restud/rdab035
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 592-625
• 关键词: UNITED-STATES; wages; INEQUALITY; demand; GROWTH; income; TRADE; MODEL; LABOR; rise

摘要

Using a broad panel of advanced economies, we document that increases in GDP per capita are associated with a systematic shift in the composition of value added to sectors that are intensive in high-skill labour, a process we label as skill-biased structural change. It follows that further development in these economies leads to an increase in the relative demand for skilled labour. We develop a quantitative two-sector model of this process as a laboratory to assess the sources of the rise of the skill premium in the U.S. and a set of ten other advanced economies, over the period 1977 to 2005. For the U.S., we find that the sector-specific skill neutral component of technical change accounts for 18-24% of the overall increase of the skill premium due to technical change, and that the mechanism through which this component of technical change affects the skill premium is via skill-biased structural change.