Riccardo LUCCHETTI () (Universita' Politecnica delle Marche, Dipartimento di Economia) Stefano STAFFOLANI () (Universita' Politecnica delle Marche, Dipartimento di Economia) Alessandro STERLACCHINI () (Universita' Politecnica delle Marche, Dipartimento di Management ed Organizzazione Aziendale)
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This paper provides an estimate of the relationships between wages, working hours and the use of computers at the workplace for the Italian labour market. On the methodological side, we other a contribution on the appropriate procedure for estimating the above effects: it is shown that the simultaneity between wages and hours must be taken into account when specifying the statistical model for the data and, furthermore, that the interactions between explanatory variables plays a significant role that cannot be neglected. Our empirical findings are also of interest: by controlling for computer skill, workers' ability and many other covariates, we found that only for higher-level white collars the average wage premium associated with computer usage is in the same order of magnitude as the one estimated for the US, Germany and France, while the effect vanishes for lower qualifications. The use of computers at work increases the number of hours worked, although this effect is small and much lower than that estimated for the US. Moreover, since hourly wages have a negative impact on hours worked, computers seem to exert little, if any, impact on working time.
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Paper provided by Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Economia in its series Working Papers with number
182.
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Article
Riccardo Lucchetti & Stefano Staffolani & Alessandro Sterlacchini, 2004.
"Computers, Wages and Working Hours in Italy,"
Giornale degli Economisti,
GDE (Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia), Bocconi University, vol. 63(3-4), pages 329-353, December.
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Find related papers by JEL classification: J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials O33 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes