Technological Complexity, Wage Differentials and Unemployment

A model is developed to analyse the relation between wages and technological complexity, as characterised by the "O–ring" theory of production. In equilibrium, the adoption of a relatively complex technology induces the employer to pay higher wages. We argue that the model can explain increased within–group wage inequality as a consequence of increased technological heterogeneity among firms.
JEL classification : J 31; O 33     

技术进步、经济增长与失业:新古典熊彼特主义经济理论的新进展

Aghion和Howitt把熊彼特主义的"创造性破坏"模型与劳动力市场搜寻匹配理论结合起来建立了一个分析经济增长与失业关系的框架.在该框架中,经济增长存在着加重失业的"创造性破坏"效应和缓解失业的资本化效应.一些学者在此框架基础上讨论了劳动力市场不完全情况下经济增长与失业的关系以及就业政策对经济增长和失业相互关系的影响."创造性破坏"的框架,把技术进步作为切入点,为认识增长与失业的相互关系提供了一个全新的分析视角.     

Technical Progress,Urban Unemployment and Heterogeneous Firms

We construct a general equilibrium model of urban unemployment with a continuum of heterogeneous urban firms producing differentiated products in a monopolistic competitive market. We introduce a notion of pattern of technical progress among the heterogeneous urban firms and show that this pattern plays a crucial role in determining the effects of urban technical progress in a developing economy. In particular, we show that the possibility of immiserizing technical progress depends on the pattern of progress among the heterogeneous urban firms.     

The Dynamics of Technological Unemployment*

This article compares the short‐ and long‐run effects of technological progress on employment. It presents a simple model of frictional unemployment capturing the negative creative destruction effects of technological change on employment. In the long run, faster technological change accelerates job obsolescence, which reduces the equilibrium level of employment. But it is also shown to have short‐run positive and potentially important effects on employment. This tends to partially reconcile the ‘‘Schumpeterian'’ view of the effects of technological change on labor markets with facts such as the response of most OECD unemployment rates to the 1970s productivity slowdown.     

Technological Progress, Job Creation, and Job Destruction

New technology embodied in capital equipment can be adopted either through destruction of existing jobs and the creation of new ones or by renovation, updating the job's equipment. Under the assumption that the destruction of jobs generates worker layoffs, we show that higher productivity growth induces lower unemployment when renovation costs are low, but that the response of employment to growth switches from positive to negative as the cost of updating existing technology rises above a unique critical level. The effects of idiosyncratic productivity differences and cross sector mobility on the aggregate relationship between growth and unemployment are also studied.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: D92, E24, J41, J63, J64.     

要素投入、技术进步与经济增长

要素投入、技术进步都是推动经济增长的重要因素,随着国际竞争的日益激烈,单纯依靠要素投入规模增加推动的经济增长难以保持持续性。运用OECD推介的增长核算方法,对我国1995-2007年的经济增长要素贡献进行估算,指出我国近年来的经济增长更大程度上是依靠投入要素的增加,需要转变经济增长方式,提高技术进步对经济增长的贡献。     

投资、技术进步与中国经济增长

中国宏观经济运行暗含着不同于发达国家的基本前提假设,这决定了我国经济增长的基本特征。在我国引进式技术进步方式下,存在投资的潮涌现象和经济的结构性高速增长。     

Sustainable Development,Renewable Resources and Technological Progress

Conflicts between optimality and sustainability are typical in the literature on sustainable development. Using the capital-resource growth model, Pezzey and Withagen (1998, Scandinavian Journal of Economics 100 (2), 513–527) have proved that if natural resources are exhaustible, the time-path of consumption is single-peaked, declining from some point in time onwards. This paper extends the model to include technical progress, resource renewability, extraction costs and population growth. The main result is that, for any constant returns to scale technology, optimal paths can be sustainable only if the social discount rate does not exceed the sum of the rates of resource regeneration and augmentation. The development of resource-saving techniques is crucial for sustaining consumption per capita in the long run, whereas capital depreciation and extraction costs are neutral with respect to this sustainability condition.     

Entrepreneurial Skills,Technological Progress,and Firm Growth*

Using cross-country establishment-level data, I show that employment profiles over a firm's life cycle are flatter in fast-growing economies than in slow-growing economies. The difference in average employment over the firm's life cycle increases with plant age. I propose a frictionless overlapping-generations model with exogenous technological progress. Firm productivity also depends on entrepreneurs’ skills. Entrepreneurs can increase their skills over their life cycle, but the growth of the vintage component of younger cohorts’ skills is higher in fast-growing economies than in slow-growing economies. This model is able to explain most of the differences observed in the sample between fast-growing and slow-growing economies.     

Precautionary Demand for Education, Inequality, and Technological Progress

This paper offers an explanation for the evolution of wage inequality within and between industries and education groups over the past several decades. The model is based on the disproportionate depreciation of technology-specific skills versus general skills due to technological progress, which occurs randomly across sectors. Consistent with empirical evidence, the model predicts that increasing randomness is the primary source of inequality growth within uneducated workers, whereas inequality growth within educated workers is determined more by changes in the composition and return to ability. Increasing randomness generates a precautionary demand for education, which we show empirically to be significant.     

技术进步、工资差距与人力资本形成

本文在劳动力异质的假设下通过建立一个二元经济模型分析发展中国家技术进步与收入差距的关系,结果显示技术进步主要通过直接和间接两种途径影响收入差距:其一,通过提高相应劳动力的劳动效率,提高其工资;其二,通过收入差距的扩大,吸引劳动力进行人力资本投资,从而劳动效率的提高,影响其收入.并得也结论,不同类型的技术进步对收入差距的影响存在较大差异,而这种差异在某种程度上影响人力资本投资,因此,在城乡转化的过程中,要缩小收入差距必须选择适当的技术进步,而且还要结合长期经济发展注意保持相应的收入差别.     

制造业集聚、技术进步与绿色创新绩效

基于我国区域制造业集聚的时空异质性分析,考虑不同技术进步路径,实证考察了制造业集聚、制造业集聚与技术进步的关联效应对绿色创新绩效的影响机理。研究表明：东部地区绝大多数省份呈现高度制造业集聚（MI≥0.05）状态,中西部地区大多数省份则呈现中度制造业集聚（0.02≤MI＜0.05）状态,且随着时间延伸,中西部地区制造业逐渐往东部地区集聚;对于技术进步路径变量,自主研发创新显著正向影响绿色创新绩效,技术引进和国内技术购买对绿色创新绩效呈现微弱或不显著负向影响;制造业集聚与绿色创新绩效间呈现倒“U”型曲线关系;制造业集聚与自主研发创新的协同效应显著正向影响绿色创新绩效,而制造业集聚与技术引进及国内技术购买的正向协同效应却受到抑制,甚至负向影响绿色创新绩效。     

Technological Progress and Sectoral Shares

This paper studies the effect of differences in the rate of technological progress between sectors on their relative sizes. There are two sectors: a stagnant sector, where productivity does not change over time, and a progressive sector, where costs decrease over time. We consider a conjectural variation approach which encompasses perfect competition, oligopoly and monopoly. The evolution of the relative shares of the stagnant and progressive sectors over time depends on the type of competition, cost levels and the price elasticity of demand. The relationship with the cost disease literature is discussed.     

技术进步、价格调整与制造业电力需求

电力需求快速增长引发的碳排放问题日益严重,中国环境容量能否承载未来电力需求持续高速增长的压力备受关注。不同产业部门电力需求存在直接和间接的经济技术联系,基于东部11个省份2007年投入产出表,测算生产过程中某一部门技术进步引致的经济系统中所有产业部门电力需求的变化幅度,以此判断对电力需求影响较大的制造业部门,并利用投入产出价格模型计算各产业部门生产成本对电力价格增加的敏感度,识别出价格效应显著的各制造业部门。综合技术进步效应与价格效应后,比较各产业部门在电力需求上的节能减排潜力的结果显示：在经济发展水平相似的东部各省份,非金属矿物制品业、金属冶炼及压延加工业、化学工业、通用、专用设备制造业4个产业的技术进步效应、价格效应均能显著抑制电力需求增加,具有较大的节能减排潜力。但实践上通过价格效应实现降低碳排放的目标,还需考虑碳成本转化率、市场结构、替代品替代效应、产品需求弹性等因素的影响。     

技术进步偏向、创新要素配置与经济韧性

基于2006—2020年中国内地31个省域面板数据,从影响传导机制、非线性特质角度探究技术进步偏向对经济韧性的影响效应。结果发现：(1)技术进步偏向对经济韧性具有显著正向影响,这一结论在稳健性与内生性检验中依然成立;(2)就作用机制而言,创新要素配置是影响技术进步偏向作用于经济韧性的重要机制;(3)门槛模型检验结果显示,技术进步偏向指数及其子维度与经济调整适应能力不存在非线性作用关系,但与经济创新转型能力具有非线性关系。因此,要合理引导技术发展方向,发挥技术进步偏向的积极作用;充分发挥“有效市场”和“有为政府”的合力作用,优化创新要素配置;以技术创新、理念革新与机制鼎新抵御潜在风险,增强经济韧性。     

有偏技术进步、要素替代与创新溢出效应——2000—2017年中国工业经验分析

在要素替代框架下,构建一个有偏技术进步的超越对数成本函数模型,利用2000—2017年中国工业面板数据估计有偏技术进步对创新溢出效应的影响。结果发现：资本和能源有偏技术进步对创新溢出存在显著负向效应,劳动有偏技术进步对创新溢出存在显著正向效应,而中间品有偏技术进步对创新溢出的正向效应不显著。进一步将要素替代弹性变量纳入模型后发现,当资本、劳动、能源和中间品替代弹性临界阈值分别高于2.864 0、5.234 1、6.453 2及4.163 9时,有偏技术进步对创新溢出具有显著正向效应。上述发现表明,技术进步遵循具有比较优势的创新资源,本质上有利于提升创新溢出效应。     

Localized Technological Change and Unemployment in the Global Economy: a Schumpeterian approach

This paper develops a Schumpeterian approach to analyse the interaction between unemployment and localized technological change in a global competitive process. The model predicts that the present levels of unemployment are caused by a combination of three factors: (i) the localized character of the wave of information and communication technology generated in the more advanced countries which, because of this, it is characterized by a factor mix appropriate to economic systems where there is an abundance of capital and a relative scarcity of labour; (ii) the strong and rapid dynamic decline of competitive advantages and quasi-rents, based on the introduction of new information and communication technology; (iii) the strong international competitive pressure from countries with lower wage levels and a greater capability to host the affiliates of multinational companies and to imitate the new information and communication technologies developed in the innovative countries. The results of the empirical analysis, for the OECD countries in the years 1990–92, suggest that a country's competitiveness and therefore its share of total world demand and employment is mostly, if not exclusively, determined by its innovative capacity. Wage levels alone cannot, even when they fall, at least in relative terms, re-establish conditions of full employment: efficiency wages are an important complementary factor in building the innovation capacity of a country.     

Unemployment,marriage and divorce

In this article, we examine whether the business cycle plays a role in marriage and divorce. We use data on Spain, since the differences between recession and expansion periods across regions are quite pronounced in that country. We find that the unemployment rate is negatively associated with the marriage rate, pointing to a pro-cyclical evolution of marriage; however, the response of the divorce rate to the business cycle is mixed. Results show the existence of different patterns, depending on geography: divorce rates in coastal regions are pro-cyclical, while in inland regions divorces react to unemployment in a counter-cyclical way.