Workers, Machines, and Economic Growth

Zeira, Joseph

doi:10.1162/003355398555847

Cited by 387 publications

(239 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…In a sense, our explanation can be seen as providing evidence to the view that industrialized countries have been recently undergoing a major technological revolution of the kind emphasized, among others, by Caselli (1999), Basu and Weil (1998) and Zeira (1998). To make our point, we extend a standard neo-classical growth model along two dimensions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 84%

“…(1999)and Zeira (1998). The model of endogenous technological choice most closely related to the current paper is probably that of Zeira (1998).…”

Section: Technologymentioning

confidence: 97%

“…In this sense, the model we develop shares features with the literature on General Purpose Technologies (GPT), and is a particular case of the class of endogenous technological choice model which have featured prominently in recent explanations of inequality trends. 16 One important feature of our 16 See for example, Acemoglu (1999), Basu and Weil (1998), Green (1998,2000), Caselli modelling approach is to propose an explanation to cross-country growth observation which does not treat individual countries as autonomous entities but instead considers them as a set of interlinked economies. 17 This appears most relevant for the set of countries we are considering.…”

Section: An International Growth Model With Endogenous Technological mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Why has the Employment-Productivity Tradeoff among Industrialized Countries been so strong?

Beaudry

Collard

2002

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This paper is motivated by a set of cross-country observations on labor productivity growth among industrial countries over the period . In particular, we show that over this period, the speed of convergence among industrialized countries has decreased substantially while the negative effect of a country's own employment growth (or labor force growth) on labor productivity has increased dramatically. The main contribution of the paper is to show how these observations are consistent with the view that industrialized countries have been undergoing a particularly drastic technological revolution over the recent past. In effect, we show how the process of endogenous technological adoption, following the diffusion of a general purpose technology, can explain these observations by causing the emergence of an AK accumulation phase where demographic factors temporarily become an major determinant of labor productivity growth. Our estimation of the model implies that the AK phase has been in effect since the early to mid-seventies, but that this phase may now be coming to an end. An important contribution of the paper is to analyze growth experiences across advanced industrialized countries within an open economy framework and to evaluate the explanation by estimating a multicountry dynamic general model.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 84%

“…(1999)and Zeira (1998). The model of endogenous technological choice most closely related to the current paper is probably that of Zeira (1998).…”

Section: Technologymentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: An International Growth Model With Endogenous Technological mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Why has the Employment-Productivity Tradeoff among Industrialized Countries been so strong?

Beaudry

Collard

2002

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“…See, for example, Champernowne (1963), Zeira (1998Zeira ( , 2006, Hellwig and Irmen (2001) and Acemoglu (2009). Finally, Saint-Paul (2008) provides a rich exposition of both conventional and unconventional models of technological change and considers their nuanced implications for wage levels and wage inequality.…”

Section: Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Skills, Tasks and Technologies: Implications for Employment and Earnings

Acemoğlu¹,

Autor²

2010

1,412

2,281

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A central organizing framework of the voluminous recent literature studying changes in the returns to skills and the evolution of earnings inequality is what we refer to as the canonical model, which elegantly and powerfully operationalizes the supply and demand for skills by assuming two distinct skill groups that perform two different and imperfectly substitutable tasks or produce two imperfectly substitutable goods. Technology is assumed to take a factor-augmenting form, which, by complementing either high or low skill workers, can generate skill biased demand shifts. In this paper, we argue that despite its notable successes, the canonical model is largely silent on a number of central empirical developments of the last three decades, including: (1) significant declines in real wages of low skill workers, particularly low skill males; (2) non-monotone changes in wages at different parts of the earnings distribution during different decades; (3) broad-based increases in employment in high skill and low skill occupations relative to middle skilled occupations (i.e., job 'polarization'); (4) rapid diffusion of new technologies that directly substitute capital for labor in tasks previously performed by moderatelyskilled workers; and (5) expanding offshoring opportunities, enabled by technology, which allow foreign labor to substitute for domestic workers in specific tasks. Motivated by these patterns, we argue that it is valuable to consider a richer framework for analyzing how recent changes in the earnings and employment distribution in the United States and other advanced economies are shaped by the interactions among worker skills, job tasks, evolving technologies, and shifting trading opportunities. We propose a tractable task-based model in which the assignment of skills to tasks is endogenous and technical change may involve the substitution of machines for certain tasks previously performed by labor. We further consider how the evolution of technology in this task-based setting may be endogenized. We show how such a framework can be used to interpret several central recent trends, and we also suggest further directions for empirical exploration.

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“…The third strand of the literature to which we contribute depicts endogenous technical change in competitive economies (see, e. g., Zeira (1998), Hellwig and Irmen (2001), Boldrin and Levine (2002), or Boldrin and Levine (2008)). The present paper shows that capital-and labor-augmenting technical change can arise endogenously in the competitive neoclassical growth model.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Endogenous capital- and labor-augmenting technical change in the neoclassical growth model

Irmen

Tabakovic

2017

Journal of Economic Theory

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Abstract:The determinants of the direction of technical change and their implications for economic growth and economic policy are studied in the one-sector neoclassical growth model of Ramsey, Cass, and Koopmans extended to allow for endogenous capital-and labor-augmenting technical change. We develop a novel micro-foundation for the competitive production sector that rests on the idea that the fabrication of output requires tasks to be performed by capital and labor. Firms may engage in innovation investments that increase the productivity of capital and labor in the performance of their respective tasks. These investments are associated with new technological knowledge that accumulates over time and sustains long-run growth. We show that the equilibrium allocation is not Pareto-efficient since both forms of technical change give rise to an inter-temporal knowledge externality. An appropriate policy of investment subsidies may implement the efficient allocation.

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Workers, Machines, and Economic Growth

Cited by 387 publications

References 20 publications

Why has the Employment-Productivity Tradeoff among Industrialized Countries been so strong?

Why has the Employment-Productivity Tradeoff among Industrialized Countries been so strong?

Skills, Tasks and Technologies: Implications for Employment and Earnings

Endogenous capital- and labor-augmenting technical change in the neoclassical growth model

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