Has ICT polarized skill demand?: evidence from eleven countries over 25 Years

Guy Michaels, Ashwini Natraj and John van Reenen

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: OECD labor markets have become more “polarized” with employment in the middle of the skill distribution falling relative to the top and (in recent years) also the bottom of the skill distribution. We test the hypothesis of Autor, Levy, and Murnane (2003) that this is partly due to information and communication technologies (ICT) complementing the analytical tasks primarily performed by highly educated workers and substituting for routine tasks generally performed by middle educated workers (with little effect on low educated workers performing manual non-routine tasks). Using industry level data on the US, Japan, and nine European countries 1980-2004 we find evidence consistent with ICT-based polarization. Industries with faster growth of ICT had greater increases in relative demand for high educated workers and bigger falls in relative demand for middle educated workers. Trade openness is also associated with polarization, but this is not robust to controls for technology (like R&D). Technologies can account for up to a quarter of the growth in demand for the college educated in the quarter century since 1980.

Keywords: Technology; trade; skill demand; wage inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J23 J24 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (40)

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/28739/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Has ICT polarized skill demand? Evidence from eleven countries over 25 years (2014)
Working Paper: Has ICT Polarized Skill Demand? Evidence from Eleven Countries over 25 Years (2010)
Working Paper: Has ICT Polarized Skill Demand? Evidence from Eleven Countries over 25 years (2010)
Working Paper: Has ICT Polarized Skill Demand? Evidence from Eleven Countries over 25 years (2010)
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