Capital–Skill Complementarity: Does Capital Composition Matter?

We estimate the effect of capital composition on the size of capital–skill complementarity and the skill wage premium. Disaggregating the capital stock into different types according to technological content, we find that: capital is more of a q‐complement to skilled labor than to unskilled labor; the higher the technological component of capital, the larger the size of the relative q‐complementarity between capital and skilled labor; and replacing non‐technological with technological capital might increase the skill wage premium by about 9 percent. Our results highlight that changes in capital composition matter for understanding changes in the skill wage premium.     

Does the sector bias of skill-biased technical change explain changing skill premia?

This paper shows the sector bias of skill-biased technical change (SBTC) can help explain changing skill premia within countries in recent decades. Our model demonstrates that in many cases it is the sector bias of SBTC that determines SBTC's effect on relative factor prices, not its factor bias. Rising (falling) skill premia are caused by SBTC that is concentrated in skill-intensive (unskill-intensive) sectors. Our empirical findings for ten OECD countries over the 1970s and 1980s are consistent with sector bias being important. In countries when skill premia were rising (falling), SBTC was generally concentrated in skill-intensive (unskill-intensive) sectors.     

Trade,Wages, and Specific Factors*

In this paper, we use a multisector specific‐factors model with sector‐specific capital and two mobile factors, skilled and unskilled labor, to examine the effects of trade, technology, and factor endowments on the skill premium in US manufacturing industries. Based on this model and data for the US manufacturing sector from 1958–96, we calculate changes in the skill premium and then carry out a decomposition to identify the changes caused by product price changes (trade), technological progress, labor, and capital endowment changes. The decomposition reveals that trade effects, working through product price changes, caused the skill premium to increase moderately. Changes in capital endowments (new investments) had a positive effect on the skill premium, with the strongest impact during the 1980s, while the effect of technological change on the skill premium varied over time. Finally, changes in relative labor endowments had a negative effect on the skill premium.     

技能溢价与工资不平等理论研究进展

尽管技能偏向性技术进步假说为理解技能溢价和工资不平等提供了一个较好的分析框架,但依然存在不一致的研究结果.争议主要集中在资本与技能之间的互补关系、劳动力市场制度变迁以及技术和贸易哪一个是造成收入差距拉大的主要原因等几个方面.未来的研究将会建立一个统一的理论框架,分析各因素在解释工资不均衡程度增加时的相互作用.     

人工智能技术对制造业资本溢价与技能溢价影响的区域异质性研究

人工智能技术会影响资本溢价和技能溢价的观点在国际上已经达成共识,但没有形成统一的研究结论。在我国劳动收入份额持续走低的形势下,有必要探讨人工智能技术对资本溢价和技能溢价带来的影响。文章聚焦我国制造业,构建资本溢价和技能溢价的内生模型,数理演绎人工智能技术对二者的影响机制,并根据我国情势分别对人工智能技术应用先发地区和后发地区的资本溢价和技能溢价走势提出命题,基于我国制造业1993-2019年的省际数据,应用四方程标准化供给面系统法进行了实证检验,进一步地,区分先发地区和后发地区对人工智能技术影响资本溢价和技能溢价的直接效应和偏效应进行了回归分析。研究结果表明：先发地区资本溢价呈微降趋势,技能溢价呈现显著极化态势；后发地区资本溢价呈上升趋势,技能溢价处于”U”型低谷区。相较于后发地区,先发地区资本溢价和技能溢价对人工智能技术的反应更敏感、作用效果更强,且人工智能技术可以通过要素结构、技术效率结构缓解资本溢价水平；人工智能技术可以通过劳动结构、技能效率结构增强技能溢价水平。     

The labor market effects of skill-biased technological change in Malaysia

During the last half-century, the evolution of educational attainment in Malaysia has been spectacular, and the current enrollment rates suggest that this progression will continue. Such a transformation of the labor skill composition should bring about macroeconomic effects such as wage compression, sectoral shifts and high skill unemployment, unless compensatory mechanisms exist. Relying on decomposition techniques, we argue that skill biased technological change (SBTC) occurred in Malaysia in recent years, and permitted unemployment figures to remain low and skill premia not to sink. We also develop a dynamic general equilibrium model, simulating the absence of SBTC and limit the number of admissions to higher education. The results are fed to a microsimulation module. They show that the reduction in wage inequalities could have been substantially more important had SBTC not been present. Furthermore, they suggest that the open-door higher education policy has contributed heavily to a reduction in wage inequalities.     

UNION WAGE COMPRESSION AND SKILL ACQUISITION

In this paper, I examine the relationship between unionisation and total output in an economy with a dual labour market, heterogeneous agents, and human capital investment. My primary focus is the skill acquisition channel, through which unionization affects total output. I theoretically demonstrate that the skill premium, and thus human capital investment, is determined by the prevalence of unions in high‐ or low‐skill‐intensive sectors. In particular, if a low (high)‐skill sector is unionised, then the skill premium is higher (lower), ensuring a larger (smaller) high‐skill sector, irrespective of the unions bargaining power. To test this hypothesis, I also empirically investigate the effects of unionisation on total productivity. The results indicate that through the reallocation of labour, unionisation induces an expansion of high‐skill‐intensive sectors, while low‐skill‐intensive sectors contract.     

Data deepening and nonbalanced economic growth

As a newly emerging factor, data can promote economic growth by driving technological progress, and nonbalanced growth between digital industries and nondigital industries has been notable in recent years. This paper provides a novel growth model with two sectors that differ in the degree of data deepening and the factor structure of the production function. In the model, data in one sector is the by-product of economic activities not only in its sector, but also in the other sector. More importantly, data utilization within and across sectors can spur new ideas and promote technological innovation. The model indicates that increases in the stock of data in the two sectors have opposite effects on the allocation of skilled labor between the two sectors. The skill premium (the wage of skilled labor relative to the wage of unskilled labor) decreases with an increase in the fraction of skilled labor employed in the data-extensive sector. With credible parameter values, model calibration shows that faster growth of output occurs in the more data-intensive sector and the high skill premium persists in the long run.     

美貌溢价:劳动力市场歧视是主因吗?—基于中国劳动力动态调查数据的实证研究

文章利用中国劳动力动态调查(CLDS)数据,分析了具有不同身高等外貌特征的劳动力的工资差异及其来源.分解结果显示,较高男性的高收入几乎全部可以用人力资本、社会交际及其他劳动能力特征差异来解释,劳动力市场歧视等不可解释部分非常小.较矮男性的低收入有60%可以用劳动能力特征差异来解释,有40%属于劳动力市场歧视等不可解释部分.身高较高(矮)的女性的高(低)收入也主要源于劳动能力特征差异;对较矮女性来说,歧视等不可解释部分具有相反的影响,即劳动力市场不但不歧视反而偏爱较矮的女性.因此,劳动力市场歧视并不是身高溢价的主要原因.然而,劳动力市场之外,在社交活动中的外貌歧视会通过增加社交网络差异而提高美貌溢价.     

Free trade, factor returns, and factor accumulation

A model of development is studied in which physical capital and unskilled labor are good substitutes, and skilled labor is complementary to the resulting aggregate. Growth in a closed economy is compared with two open regimes. Inflows of physical capital only reduce the interest rate and raise both wage rates. The skilled wage rises more sharply, however, increasing the skill premium and accelerating human capital accumulation. Full integration with a larger and more developed neighbor also reduces the interest rate and raises both wage rates, but in this case the skill premium falls and human capital accumulation changes very little.     

Technology and labor regulations: theory and evidence

This paper shows that different labor market policies can lead to differences in technology across sectors in a model of labor saving technologies. Labor market regulations reduce the skill premium and as a result, if technologies are labor saving, countries with more stringent labor regulation, which bind more for low skilled workers, become less technologically advanced in their high skill sectors, but more technologically advanced in their low skill sectors. We then present data on capital-output ratios, on estimated productivity levels and on patent creation, which tend to support the predictions of our model.     

信息技术的分配效应*——论“互联网+”对劳动收入份额的影响

现有文献大多关注信息技术的“增长效应”，但对其“分配效应”没有进行深入的探讨，尤其是没有研究信息技术如何影响企业初次分配中资本和劳动两种要素的收入份额。本文使用中国工业企业数据库2004—2007年的微观数据，分析企业使用信息技术对要素收入分配格局的影响。本文研究发现，使用信息技术的企业其劳动收入份额更高，并且这一结论对于不同的变量、样本和模型设定都十分稳健。信息技术的分配效应也存在异质性，在内资企业、内销企业、东部地区的企业表现更加明显。对影响机制的讨论表明，使用信息技术在提高企业增加值的同时，更大幅度地提高了平均劳动报酬，从而导致初次分配更加偏向劳动。本文不仅填补了相关领域的空白，而且具有明显的政策含义。     

Costly investment, complementarities and the skill premium

We propose a new framework to analyse the relationship between the relative high-skilled labour endowment, the skill premium and economic growth. Building on Acemoglu and Zilibotti (2001), we introduce physical capital; internal costly investment in both capital and R&D; and complementarities between intermediate goods. We only find a positive relationship between the relative labour endowment and both the skill premium and economic growth within determined intervals of relative labour endowment values, which vary with the absolute productive advantage of high over low-skilled labour. The model thus accommodates theoretically mixed empirical results on the relative labour endowment-skill premium relationship. We further find that the impact on both the relative labour endowment and the skill premium of a rise in investment costs or in the complementarities degree depends on: (i) the absolute productivity advantage of high over low-skilled labour; and (ii) the relative labour endowment.     

国家职业资格证书、工人技能水平和收入效应——来自5家制造型企业21个生产车间的经验证据

推行国家职业资格证书是我国劳动就业政策的重要内容,也是广大劳动者非学历职业教育的主要方式,对加强技能人才培养、促进劳动力市场建设等方面具有重要意义。本文利用5家制造型企业21个生产车间的调查数据,对国家职业资格证书与工人的技能水平和年收入之间的关系进行了研究。研究发现,获得国家职业资格证书的工人在技能水平上显著高于无证工人,证书等级越高,技能水平越高。与无证工人相比,初级工和中级工证书的收入效应约为9.5%,高级工证书的收入效应为11.0%,技师及以上等级证书的收入效应显著上升至24.0%。进一步的分析揭示,初级工、中级工和高级工证书的收入效应主要是因为工人技能水平提高带来的;技师以上等级证书的收入效应一方面来源于工人技能水平的提高,另一方面则是由一些非技能因素造成的。     

Impact of Chinese growth and trade on labor in developed countries

This paper examines the impacts of growth in China's economy and trade on the skill premium of labor in developed countries. We utilize a unique global dataset that disaggregates workers by occupations to identify impacts across labor categories with different skill sets, complementing the widely used GTAP Data Base in the CGE framework offered by the GTAP model. To study the impacts of China's fast-paced growth, we model the counterfactual, i.e., what if China grew and opened at a more modest rate; we then compare this baseline with China's actual growth. Results indicate that a strong rise in manufacturing exports from China to the US impacts output and employment in the US. The US shifts its production away from light manufacturing sectors to more service-oriented sectors that also tend to engage higher skilled labor. There is a small decrease in the real wages of unskilled labor and a rise in the real wages of skilled labor. Interestingly, not all categories of unskilled labor lose, rather those that are more directly linked with manufacturing sectors are impacted; unskilled ‘service and shop workers’ and the unskilled ‘agricultural workers, machine operators, assemblers, craft workers, and others’ observe a small decline in real wages, while the impact on unskilled ‘clerks’ is insignificant. For all categories of skilled workers, there is an increase in real wages primarily driven by the shift in production to services and high-skilled labor intensive categories, resulting in the rising skill premium. Hence disaggregating the labor data provides greater depth on the understanding of the differential impacts on domestic workers resulting from trade, and thereby guides policy on how these differential impacts can be smoothed through redistribution of benefits. Consistent with other study findings, there is a positive impact on overall growth and welfare in the US, EU and Australasia.     

Extensive and Intensive Margins of Exports and Labor Heterogeneity

This paper investigates how changes in skilled and unskilled labor supply affect different margins of exports. Using bilateral trade data in manufacturing sectors of 34 countries from 1995 to 2010, we find that most of the impact of skilled labor on exports goes through the intensive margin, whereas most of the effect of unskilled labor works through the extensive margin. These outcomes result from the impact of labor skill composition on the productivity cut‐off of exporters. We also find that the impact of skilled and unskilled labor on trade margins depends on the income level of countries and on the type of products. The results indicate that the effect of skilled labor is greater for low‐income countries and differentiated products, while that of unskilled labor is greater for high‐income countries and homogeneous products.     

Endogenous skill heterogeneity and inflation

This paper examines the implications of ex ante skill heterogeneity for long run inflation. We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model in which there are two types of labor (skilled and unskilled), two types of capital (human and physical), and money is introduced via a cash in advance constraint on consumption purchases. Skill heterogeneity is characterized in terms of (i) a parameter governing the ease with which the two types of labor can be substituted for each other in production; and (ii) the “productivity” of human capital in the production of skill. The model includes the accumulation of human capital which in turn creates skill heterogeneity among workers through an efficiency wage mechanism. Numerical experiments indicate that there is a range of parameter estimates in which the Friedman Rule may not be optimal. Furthermore, our quantitative experiments also indicate that there is a range of parameter values in which a greater degree of skill heterogeneity may be associated with a greater preference for inflation. Empirically, we also find that the inflation and heterogeneity correlation is positive.     

工业化中政府作用的动态经济学分析

中国工业化进程中政府起到了重要作用。本文立足于新中国工业化历程,在动态经济学框架内,讨论政府通过对劳动密集型产业征税而对资本密集型产业扶持来推动工业化的问题。在理论模型的基础上,通过数值模拟,分析了稳态下税率与各经济部门的资本、产出以及社会总资本、总产出存在的倒"U"型关系,并且对税率与政府税收之间的倒"U"型关系进行了讨论。本文认为政府对劳动密集型产业过度提取不仅不利于劳动密集型产业发展,也不利于经济总量与政府税收的增长,甚至不利于资本密集型产业的可持续增长。本研究与结论部分解释了历史上我国优先发展重工业难以维系的原因,并部分揭示了当前亟需调整经济结构的内在机理。     

Human capital,employment protection and growth in Europe

Using data for a large sample of manufacturing and service sectors in 14 EU countries, this paper shows that the value added and TFP growth rate differential between high and low human capital intensive industries is greater in countries with low than countries with high levels of employment protection legislation. We also find that such negative effect of EPL is slightly stronger for countries near the technology frontier, in the manufacturing sector and after the 1990s. We interpret these results suggesting that technology adoption depends on the skill level of the workforce and on the capacity of firms to adjust employment as technology changes: therefore, firing costs have a stronger impact in sectors where technical change is more skill-biased and technology adoption more important.     

Risky human capital and deferred capital income taxation

We study the structure of optimal wedges and capital taxes in a dynamic Mirrlees economy with endogenous distribution of skills. Human capital is a private, stochastic state variable that drives the skill process of each individual. Building on the findings of the labor literature, we construct a tractable life-cycle model of human capital evolution with risky investment and stochastic depreciation. In this setting, we demonstrate the optimality of (a) a human capital premium, i.e., an excess return on human capital relative to physical capital, (b) a large intertemporal wedge early in the life-cycle, and (c) a non-zero intratemporal wedge even at the top of the skill distribution at all dates except the last date in the life-cycle. The main implication for the structure of optimal linear capital taxes is the necessity of deferred taxation of physical capital. The average marginal tax rate on physical capital held in every period is zero in present value. However, expected capital tax payments do not equal zero in every period. Necessarily, agents face negative expected capital tax payments early in the life-cycle and positive expected capital tax payments late in the life-cycle.