The Impact of New Technologies on the Demand for Heterogenous Labour: Empirical Evidence from the German Business-Related Services Sector

The impact of technology on the demand for heterogeneous labor is controversely discussed throughout the literature. New technology which is said to favor high skilled labor and to substitute low skilled labor is often considered as the main reason for the decline in relative demand for low skilled labor. While most analyses focus on manufacturing industries, this paper presents empirical evidence that technological skill bias is also present for business related services, an increasingly important sector in the German economy. Cross-sectional data from an innovation survey and panel data from a quarterly business survey in the service sector are used in the empirical investigation. The data allow to directly distinguish among five different skill groups. The micro-level data also allow the analysis of shifting employment patterns for a single economic unit. Ordered probit models are utilized to study the determinants of skill shifts in business related services. It turns out that investment in information and communication technologies is a complement of university graduates and a substitute for workers with completed vocational training. New capital goods are substitutive to low unskilled labor whereas the demand for technically skilled labor remains unaffected by investment decisions. A puzzling finding is that labor costs do not play an important role in the demand for university graduates, technically skilled and unskilled labor but turn out to be highly significant for skilled labor. Also, expected foreign competition has a significantly positive effect on the demand for both university graduates and unskilled labor alike while present foreign competition is only positively significant in the demand for university graduates. --skill-biased technological change,capital-skill complementarity,panel data,service sector,ordered probit model

How Does Technology Affect Skill Demand? Technical Changes and Capital-Skill Complementarity in the 21st Century

This paper attempts to examine technology’s impact on the labor market through the lens of skilled labor. Technical changes in the late 20th century are skill-biased in nature, because they are found to complement with skilled labor who are adept at adopting new technologies. However, recent studies document a lower demand for high-skilled labor in the 21st century, compared with the late 20th century. Are technologies starting to substitute for human skills instead of complementing them? Drawing on the wage share data from 1975 to 2015 for 18 sectors in the United States, I find strong and robust evidence of complementary relationships between technical changes and demand for skilled labor. Furthermore, my results suggest that technologies have become more skilled-biased, not less, in the 21st century

The effect of high-tech services offshoring on skilled employment: intra-firm evidence

The offshoring of high-tech services has greatly increased in recent years, with consequences for firms demand for skilled employment in firms. This paper specifically analyzes the relationship between R&D offshoring and the demand for R&D employment using firm-level data for Spanish manufacturing and services companies during the period 2004-2009. Estimating different specifications with panel data techniques, we find that this association is statistically positive. In particular, for services firms a 1 percentage point increase in R&D offshoring raises the demand for researchers by about 11%. This suggests the existence of complementarity among them as productive inputs

The Enigmatic Services Sector of India

The share of services in India’s GDP, at round 60%, is much higher than that in other emerging economies including China. Since the year 1991 Growth of services in the economy has surpassed that of agriculture and manufacturing, a feature that defies received wisdom on the growth pattern of economies. Received wisdom, grounded in the Kuznets paradigm, is that growth in the productivity of agriculture and agricultural incomes provides the manufacturing sector both low cost agricultural raw materials and a demand for its output. In time, the continued growth in incomes promotes the growth of the services sector both through a demand for consumer services and for services as growth promoting inputs into manufacturing and agriculture. India’s services sector, though, has grown alongside an agriculture sector that is none too productive, and a manufacturing sector that accounts for a relatively low 20% of the GDP. This paper provides an explanation, grounded in the country’s history and economic policies of the pre- liberalization era, for the growth of the services sector and argues that, contrary to popular opinion, it can lead the economy

The determinants of regional specialisation in business services: agglomeration economies, vertical linkages and innovation

The article accounts for the determinants of sectoral specialisation in business services (BS) across the EU-27 regions as determined by: (i) agglomeration economies (ii) the region-specific structure of intermediate linkages (iii) technological innovation and knowledge intensity and (iv) the presence of these factors in neighbouring regions. The empirical analysis draws upon the REGIO panel database over the period 1999–2003. By estimating a Spatial Durbin Model, we find significant spatial effects in explaining regional specialisation in BS. Our findings show that, besides urbanisation economies, the spatial structure of intermediate sectoral linkages and innovation, in particular Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), are important determinants of specialisation in BS. The article contributes to the debate on the global versus local determinants of regional specialisation in BS by restating the importance of the regional sectoral structure besides that of urbanisation. We draw policy implications by rejecting the ‘footloose hypothesis’ for BS

UKERC Review of evidence for the rebound effect: Technical report 3: Elasticity of substitution studies

This Working Paper forms part of the TPA’s assessment of evidence for a rebound effect from improved energy efficiency. Technical Report 3 focuses upon empirical estimates of the elasticity of substitution between energy and capital. This parameter has been identified as a key determinant of the likely magnitude of the rebound effect in different sectors. The report clarifies the meaning and importance of this parameter, summarises and compares empirical estimates of this parameter, evaluates the reasons that have been proposed for the differing results, discusses whether a consensus has been reached to whether energy and capital can be considered as ‘substitutes’ or ‘complements’ and draws some implications for the rebound effect

International financial centres, office market rents and volatility

Despite continuing developments in information technology and the growing economic significance of the emerging Eastern European, South American and Asian economies, international financial activity remains strongly concentrated in a relatively small number of international financial centres. That concentration of financial activity requires a critical mass of office occupation and creates demand for high specification, high cost space. The demand for that space is increasingly linked to the fortunes of global capital markets. That linkage has been emphasised by developments in real estate markets, notably the development of global real estate investment, innovation in property investment vehicles and the growth of debt securitisation. The resultant interlinking of occupier, asset, debt and development markets within and across global financial centres is a source of potential volatility and risk. The paper sets out a broad conceptual model of the linkages and their implications for systemic market risk and presents preliminary empirical results that provide support for the model proposed

Spillovers in product and process innovation: evidence from manufacturing firms

This paper proposes a new empirical approach to assess the impact of knowledge spillovers on firms' productivity and demand. I consider a model where process innovations spillovers to other firms raise firms relative efficiency and technological diffusion of product innovations enhances firms' demand. By modelling knowledge capital as a function of own investment in R\ and D and spillovers, I can compare the impact of these two complementary sources of knowledge on both the supply and the demand side. The results obtained confirm the findings already highlighted by previous empirical studies that technological externalities affect significantly firms' productivity growth. The new result obtained is that technological diffusion of product innovations is larger than the one deriving from process innovations, both in magnitude and pervasiveness

UKERC Review of evidence for the rebound effect: Technical report 5: Energy, productivity and economic growth studies

This report forms part of the TPA’s assessment of evidence for a rebound effect from improved energy efficiency. Technical Report 5 focuses upon the relationship between energy, productivity and economic growth and examines the claim that improved energy efficiency will increase economy-wide energy consumption - the so-called ‘Khazzoom-Brookes postulate’