Should the Personal Computer Be Considered a Technological Revolution? Evidence from US Metropolitan Areas

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Beaudry, Paul; Doms, Mark; Lewis, Ethan
• 署名单位: University of British Columbia; National Bureau of Economic Research; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - San Francisco; Dartmouth College
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-3808
• DOI: 10.1086/658371
• 发表日期: 2010
• 页码: 988-1036
• 关键词: higher-education; wage inequality; workers; return

摘要

The introduction and diffusion of personal computers are widely viewed as a technological revolution. Using U. S. metropolitan area-level panel data, this paper asks whether links between PC adoption, educational attainment, and the return to skill conform to a model of technological revolutions in which the speed and extent of adoption are endogenous. The model implies that cities will adjust differently to the arrival of a more skill-intensive means of production, with the returns to skill increasing most where skill is abundant and its return is low. We show that the cross-city data fit many of the predictions of the model during the period 1980-2000, the PC diffusion era.