Does skill-biased technical change diffuse internationally?

Patrick Schulte

No 15-088, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: This paper studies the question whether skill-biased technical change diffuses internationally and that way contributes to the increasing relative skill demand in other countries. So far, the role of skill-biased technology diffusion has hardly been studied empirically. Using new sectoral data for a panel of 40 emerging and developed countries, 30 industries (covering manufacturing and service industries) and 13 years (1995-2007), the analysis shows that skill-biased technology diffusion is statistically and economically important in explaining skill-biased technical change. Countries further away from the skill-specific technological frontier subsequently show higher skill-specific productivity growth. For that, the bilateral distance between two countries proves to be an important mediating factor, whereas intersectoral trade linkages, so far, explain only a small part of it. The main results hold for both, developed and emerging countries.

Keywords: skill-biased technical change; technology diffusion; distance; inputoutput linkages; industry-level data; emerging and developed countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C67 F16 J24 O14 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-eff, nep-gro, nep-ino, nep-lma and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:15088

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