New Technologies, Wages and Worker Selection

Horst Entorf, Michel Gollac and Francis Kramarz ()

No 1761, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We study the impact of new technologies (NT) on wages and employment using a unique panel that matches data on individuals and on their firms. As found in the United States (Krueger (1993)), we show that computer users are better paid than non-users (between 15% and 20% more). But we also show that these workers were already better compensated before the introduction of the NTs. Total returns to computer use amount to 2%. Even when possible measurement errors are taken into account, total returns cannot exceed 4%, which is far from the cross-section estimates. Furthermore, computer users are protected from job losses as long as bad business conditions do not last too long. This result holds even after controlling for possible selection biases.

Keywords: Computers; skill-biased technical change; Unemployment; Wages (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J31 J64 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1997-12
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=1761 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: New Technologies, Wages, and Worker Selection (1999)
Working Paper: New technologies, wages, and worker selection (1999)
Working Paper: New Technologies, Wages and Worker Selection (1997)
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:1761

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.cepr.org/ ... ers/dp.php?dpno=1761

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().