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Skill-Biased Technical Change and Regional Convergence

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  • Elisa Giannone

    (University of Chicago)

Abstract

Poorer US cities were catching up with richer ones at an annual rate of roughly 1.4% between 1940 and 1980. However, wage convergence across US cities went from 1.4% a year between 1940 and 1980 to 0% a year between 1980 and 2010. This paper quantifies the contributions of skill-biased technical change (SBTC) and agglomeration economies to the end of cross-cities wage convergence within the US between 1980 and 2010. I develop and estimate a dynamic spatial equilibrium model that looks at the causes of the decline in spatial wage convergence. The model choice is motivated by novel empirical regularities regarding the evolution of the skill premium and migration patterns over time and across space. The model successfully matches the quantitative features of the decline in US regional wage convergence, as well as other stylized facts on US economic growth. Moreover, the model also reproduces the convergence and the divergence in the skill ratio across US cities and other features on quantities, such as the secular decline in within US migration after 1980. Finally, the counterfactual analysis suggests that SBTC explains the approximately the 80% of the decline of regional convergence between 1980 and 2010 among high skill workers.

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  • Elisa Giannone, 2017. "Skill-Biased Technical Change and Regional Convergence," 2017 Meeting Papers 190, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed017:190
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    3. Mengus, Eric & Davis, Donald R. & Michalski, Tomasz K., 2020. "Labor Market Polarization and The Great Divergence: Theory and Evidence," CEPR Discussion Papers 14623, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
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    7. Donald R. Davis & Eric Mengus & Tomasz K. Michalski, 2020. "Labor Market Polarization and The Great Urban Divergence," NBER Working Papers 26955, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Michael Storper, 2022. "Dodging the burden of proof: A reply to Manville, Lens and Mönkkönen," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 59(1), pages 59-74, January.
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