Skill-biased structural change

Francisco Buera, Joseph Kaboski, Richard Rogerson and Juan Vizcaino

No 2020/09, Discussion Papers from University of Nottingham, Centre for Finance, Credit and Macroeconomics (CFCM)

Abstract: Using a broad panel of advanced economies we document that increases in GDP per capita are associated with a systematic shift in the composition of value added to sectors that are intensive in high-skill labor, a process we label as skill-biased structural change. It follows that further development in these economies leads to an increase in the relative demand for skilled labor. We develop a quantitative two-sector model of this process as a laboratory to assess the sources of the rise of the skill premium in the US and a set of ten other advanced economies, over the period 1977 to 2005. For the US, we find that the sector-specific skill neutral component of technical change accounts for 18-24% of the overall increase of the skill premium due to technical change, and that the mechanism through which this component of technical change affects the skill premium is via skill biased structural change.

Keywords: skill biased structural change, labour economics, skilled labour; GDP (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-tid
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Skill-Biased Structural Change (2022)
Working Paper: Skill Biased Structural Change (2015)
Working Paper: Skill Biased Structural Change (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:not:notcfc:2020/09

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