Is technological change really skills-biased? Firm-level evidence of the complementarities between ICT and workers' education

Thomas Bolli and Filippo Pusterla

Economics of Innovation and New Technology, 2023, vol. 32, issue 1, 69-91

Abstract: This paper extends and refines the concept of ICT-driven skills-biased technological change by disentangling the effects of information technologies (IT) and communication technologies (CT). Guided by the theory that IT and CT differently affect firms' production processes, we investigate the complementarities between these two distinct technologies and workers' levels of education in affecting firms' productivity. Exploiting within-firm variation between 2005 and 2017, we find that the use of IT – measured as use of business management tools – is particularly beneficial for workers with a tertiary vocational education. In contrast, CT – measured as workers' use of the intranet – is especially complementary to workers with a tertiary academic education. While consistent with the ICT-driven skills-biased technological change hypothesis, our results offer evidence on the necessity for differentiating between the effects of IT and CT on firm productivity when differently educated workers use these technologies.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10438599.2020.1871270 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Is Technological Change Really Skills-Biased? Firm-level Evidence of the Complementarities between ICT and Workers' Education (2019)
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:taf:ecinnt:v:32:y:2023:i:1:p:69-91

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/GEIN20

DOI: 10.1080/10438599.2020.1871270

Access Statistics for this article

Economics of Innovation and New Technology is currently edited by Professor Cristiano Antonelli

More articles in Economics of Innovation and New Technology from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().