IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/qed/wpaper/748.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Technological Change, Sectoral Shifts and the Distribution of Earnings: A Human Capital Model

Author

Listed:
  • Julian R. Betts

Abstract

This paper studies the long-run impact of technological change on the labour market in a two-sector model with heterogeneous workers. It is assumed that inventions increase both productivity and skill requirements. Such skill-intensive inventions cause increases in inequality, shifts in labour out of the technologically dynamic sector, and relative price changes. In contrast, a skill-neutral invention cause neither changes in inequality nor sectoral shifts, while a skill-extensive invention reduces inequality and causes sectoral shifts toward the innovative sector. Only a skill-neutral invention leads unequivocally to a Pareto improvement.

Suggested Citation

  • Julian R. Betts, 1989. "Technological Change, Sectoral Shifts and the Distribution of Earnings: A Human Capital Model," Working Paper 748, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    • Handle: RePEc:qed:wpaper:748
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    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:qed:wpaper:748. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Mark Babcock (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/qedquca.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.