The Origins of Technology-Skill Complementarity

Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz

Scholarly Articles from Harvard University Department of Economics

Abstract: Current concern with relationships among particular technologies, capital, and the wage structure motivates this study of the origins of technology-skill complementarity in manufacturing. We offer evidence of the existence of technology-skill and capital-skill (relative) complementarities from 1909 to 1929, and suggest that they were associated with continuous-process and batch methods and the adoption of electric motors. Industries that used more capital per worker and a greater proportion of their horsepower in the form of purchased electricity employed relatively more educated blue-collar workers in 1940 and paid their blue-collar workers substantially more from 1909 to 1929. We also infer capital-skill complementarity using the wage-bill for non-production workers and find that the relationship was as large from 1909-19 as it has been recently. Finally, we link our findings to those on the high-school movement (1910 to 1940). The rapid increase in the supply of skills from 1910 to 1940 may have prevented rising inequality with technological change.

Date: 1998
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (440)

Published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics

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Related works:
Journal Article: The Origins of Technology-Skill Complementarity (1998)
Working Paper: The Origins of Technology-Skill Complementarity (1996)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hrv:faseco:27867130

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