Labor supply and personal computer adoption

Mark Doms and Ethan Lewis

No 2006-18, Working Paper Series from Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

Abstract: The positive correlations found between computer use and human capital are often interpreted as evidence that the adoption of computers have raised the relative demand for skilled labor, the widely touted skill-biased technological change hypothesis. However, several models argue the skill-intensity of technology is endogenously determined by the relative supply of skilled labor. We use instruments for the supply of human capital coupled with a rich dataset on computer usage by businesses to show that the supply of human capital is an important determinant of the adoption of personal computers. Our results suggest that great caution must be exercised in placing economic interpretations on the correlations often found between technology and human capital.

Keywords: Labor; supply (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/papers/2006/wp06-18bk.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Labor supply and personal computer adoption (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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedfwp:2006-18

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Research Library ().