IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_513.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Wage Inequality and the Effort Incentive Effects of Technological Progress

Author

Listed:
  • Campbell Leith
  • Chol-Won Li

Abstract

To explain the rise in the college wage premium in developed economies in the past decades, the present paper examines the effects of technological progress on workers‘ effort incentives, which determine the effective labor supply. Five effort incentive effects of technological progress are identified, and through these we obtain a number of results. Firstly, we establish that wage inequality can increase following an acceleration in skill-neutral technological progress. Secondly, an increase in skill-biased technological progress means, (i) skilled wages overshoot, (ii) unskilled wages undershoot, and hence (iii) wage inequality overshoots their respective long-run values. Thirdly, endogenising the number of skilled and unskilled workers on the basis of economic incentives does not eliminate wage inequality even in the long run. Fourthly, we can obtain hysteresis effects in the determination of long-run wage inequality. Finally, government policies which raise the equilibrium rate of unemployment are likely to reduce the impact of technical progress on inequality, and this may help to explain the relative increase in inequality in the US and UK compared with other European economies. Our focus on the supply-side complements studies which emphasize the impact of skill-biased technological progress on relative demand for skill workers.

Suggested Citation

  • Campbell Leith & Chol-Won Li, 2001. "Wage Inequality and the Effort Incentive Effects of Technological Progress," CESifo Working Paper Series 513, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_513
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo_wp513.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Per Krusell & Lee E. Ohanian & JosÈ-Victor RÌos-Rull & Giovanni L. Violante, 2000. "Capital-Skill Complementarity and Inequality: A Macroeconomic Analysis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(5), pages 1029-1054, September.
    2. Andreas Hornstein & Per Krusell, 1996. "Can Technology Improvements Cause Productivity Slowdowns?," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1996, Volume 11, pages 209-276, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Galor, Oded & Tsiddon, Daniel, 1997. "Technological Progress, Mobility, and Economic Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(3), pages 363-382, June.
    4. Steven J. Davis & John C. Haltiwanger & Scott Schuh, 1998. "Job Creation and Destruction," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262540932, April.
    5. Shapiro, Carl & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1985. "Equilibrium Unemployment as a Worker Discipline Device: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(4), pages 892-893, September.
    6. Kimball, Miles S, 1994. "Labor-Market Dynamics When Unemployment is a Worker Discipline Device," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 1045-1059, September.
    7. Oded Galor & Omer Moav, 2000. "Ability-Biased Technological Transition, Wage Inequality, and Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(2), pages 469-497.
    8. Steven J. Davis & John Haltiwanger, 1992. "Gross Job Creation, Gross Job Destruction, and Employment Reallocation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(3), pages 819-863.
    9. Katz, Lawrence F. & Autor, David H., 1999. "Changes in the wage structure and earnings inequality," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 26, pages 1463-1555, Elsevier.
    10. Philippe Aghion & Peter Howitt, 1994. "Growth and Unemployment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 61(3), pages 477-494.
    11. Kevin M. Murphy & W. Craig Riddell & Paul M. Romer, 1998. "Wages, Skills, and Technology in the United States and Canada," NBER Working Papers 6638, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. David H. Autor & Lawrence F. Katz & Alan B. Krueger, 1998. "Computing Inequality: Have Computers Changed the Labor Market?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(4), pages 1169-1213.
    13. Peter Gottschalk & Robert Moffitt, 1994. "The Growth of Earnings Instability in the U.S. Labor Market," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 25(2), pages 217-272.
    14. Nickell, Stephen & Bell, Brian, 1995. "The Collapse in Demand for the Unskilled and Unemployment across the OECD," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 11(1), pages 40-62, Spring.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tetsugen Haruyama, 2009. "Competitive Innovation With Codified And Tacit Knowledge," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 56(4), pages 390-414, September.
    2. Cecilia Garcia-Penalosa & Campbell leith & Chol-Won Li, 2001. "Wage Inequality and the Effort Incentive Effects of Technical Progress," Working Papers 2001_14, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Cecilia Garcia-Penalosa & Campbell leith & Chol-Won Li, 2001. "Wage Inequality and the Effort Incentive Effects of Technical Progress," Working Papers 2001_14, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    2. David B. Audretsch & Mark Sanders, 2007. "Globalization and the Rise of the Entrepreneurial Economy," Jena Economics Research Papers 2007-003, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    3. Daron Acemoglu, 2003. "Cross-Country Inequality Trends," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(485), pages 121-149, February.
    4. Borghans, Lex & ter Weel, Bas, 2007. "The diffusion of computers and the distribution of wages," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 715-748, April.
    5. Daron Acemoglu, 2002. "Technical Change, Inequality, and the Labor Market," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 40(1), pages 7-72, March.
    6. Fatih Guvenen & Burhanettin Kuruscu, 2012. "Understanding The Evolution Of The Us Wage Distribution: A Theoretical Analysis," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 482-517, May.
    7. Andreas Hornstein & Per Krusell & Giovanni L. Violante, 2002. "Vintage capital as an origin of inequalities," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Nov.
    8. Fatih Guvenen & Burhanettin Kuruscu, 2006. "Ben-Porath meets skill-biased technical change: a theoretical analysis of rising inequality," Discussion Paper / Institute for Empirical Macroeconomics 144, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    9. Greiner, Alfred & Rubart, Jens & Semmler, Willi, 2004. "Economic growth, skill-biased technical change and wage inequality: A model and estimations for the US and Europe," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 597-621, December.
    10. Patricia Crifo & Etienne Lehmann, 2001. "Why the Kuznets Curve Will Always Reverse," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-00150324, HAL.
    11. Gueorgui Kambourov & Iourii Manovskii, 2000. "Occupational Mobility and Wage Inequality, Second Version," PIER Working Paper Archive 04-026, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 15 Jun 2004.
    12. Patrick Francois & Joanne Roberts, 2003. "Contracting Productivity Growth," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 70(1), pages 59-85.
    13. Francesco Caselli & Wilbur John Coleman II, 2002. "The U.S. Technology Frontier," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 148-152, May.
    14. Nasfi Fkili Wahiba & Mahmoudi Dina, 2023. "Technological Change, Growth and Income Inequality," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 13(1), pages 121-131, January.
    15. Patricia Crifo & Etienne Lehmann, 2001. "Why will the Kuznets Curve always reverse ?," Post-Print halshs-00179987, HAL.
    16. Maoz, Yishay D. & Moav, Omer, 2004. "Social Stratification, Capital–Skill Complementarity, And The Nonmonotonic Evolution Of The Education Premium," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 8(3), pages 295-309, June.
    17. Daron Acemoglu, 2003. "Patterns of Skill Premia," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 70(2), pages 199-230.
    18. Crifo, Patricia, 2008. "Skill supply and biased technical change," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(5), pages 812-830, October.
    19. Audra Bowlus & Lance Lochner & Chris Robinson & Eda Suleymanoglu, 2023. "Wages, Skills, and Skill-Biased Technical Change: The Canonical Model Revisited," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 58(6), pages 1783-1819.
    20. Aghion, Philippe & Howitt, Peter & Violante, Giovanni L, 2002. "General Purpose Technology and Wage Inequality," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 7(4), pages 315-345, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_513. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.