Do technological improvements in the manufacturing sector raise or lower employment?

Yongsung Chang () and Jay H. Hong

No 05-5, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia

Abstract: We find that technology's effect on employment varies greatly across manufacturing industries. Some industries exhibit a temporary reduction in employment in response to a permanent increase in TFP, whereas far more industries exhibit an employment increase in response to a permanent TFP shock. This raises serious questions about existing work that finds that a labor productivity shock has a strong negative effect on employment. There are tantalizing and interesting differences between TFP and labor productivity. We argue that TFP is a more natural measure of technology because labor productivity reflects shifts in the input mix as well as in technology.

Keywords: Technology - Economic aspects; Manufactures; Employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino
Date: 2005
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.philadelphiafed.org/research-and-data/p ... ers//2005/wp05-5.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Do technological improvements in the manufacturing sector raise or lower employment? (2005)
Journal Article: Do Technological Improvements in the Manufacturing Sector Raise or Lower Employment? (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedpwp:05-5

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.phil.frb.org/econ/wps/index.html

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Diane Rosenberger ().