Income inequality in the knowledge economy

Cristiano Antonelli and Matteo Tubiana

Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, 2020, vol. 55, issue C, 153-164

Abstract: Advanced economies are characterised by the parallel increase of income inequality and of the role of knowledge intensive activities that substitute the manufacturing industry at the core of the system. Radical changes in the organisation of the generation, appropriation and exploitation of technological knowledge increase the levels of knowledge rents. The shift to the knowledge economy triggers the polarisation of labour markets between creative workers, able to participate into the rents associated with knowledge exploitation, and standard labour, exposed to the fall of employment in progressively de-unionised manufacturing industries. The theoretical framework introduced associates such knowledge-intensive structural change to the rising levels of income inequality. The empirical section provides support for this correlation estimating on the evidence of 20 OECD countries from 1990 to 2016 a negative sign for within income inequality regressed on the quota of KIBS and R&D investments.

Keywords: Knowledge tradability; Knowledge appropriability; Knowledge-intensive business services; Trade-union bargaining power; Unemployment; Wealth inequality; Rent inequality; Income inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D24 O33 P10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0954349X2030374X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:streco:v:55:y:2020:i:c:p:153-164

DOI: 10.1016/j.strueco.2020.07.003

Access Statistics for this article

Structural Change and Economic Dynamics is currently edited by F. Duchin, H. Hagemann, M. Landesmann, R. Scazzieri, A. Steenge and B. Verspagen

More articles in Structural Change and Economic Dynamics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().