Abstract
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, economists noted a rapid increase in wage inequality and offered several competing explanations for it. As the dust settled on this research effort, a consensus emerged that skill-biased technological change was the most likely cause of increased wage inequality. In the session “Technology and the Labor Market—Micro Issues,” two papers, Autor, Levy, and Murnane and Card and DiNardo, revisit the skill-biased technological change hypothesis and come to very different conclusions. This discussion will evaluate these papers in light of the stylized facts about wage inequality and provide my own perspective on the contribution of technological change to increased wage inequality.
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References
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Ginther, D.K. (2003). A Discussion of Skill-Biased Technological Change and Wage Inequality. In: Ginther, D.K., Zavodny, M., Foley, L.H. (eds) Technology, Growth, and the Labor Market. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0325-5_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0325-5_8
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