ICT Capital-Skill Complementarity and Wage Inequality: Evidence from OECD Countries

Although wage inequality has evolved in advanced countries over recent decades, it is unknown the extent to which the evolution of wage inequality is attributable to observed factors such as capital and labor quantities or unobserved factors such as labor-augmenting technology. To examine this issue, we estimate an aggregate production function extended to allow for capital-skill complementarity and factor-biased technological change using cross-country panel data and the shift-share instrument. Our results indicate that most of the changes in the skill premium are attributed to observed factors including ICT equipment in the majority of OECD countries

Non-Perturbative Renormalization Group Analysis in Quantum Mechanics

We analyze quantum mechanical systems using the non-perturbative renormalization group (NPRG). The NPRG method enables us to calculate quantum corrections systematically and is very effective for studying non-perturbative dynamics. We start with anharmonic oscillators and proceed to asymmetric double well potentials, supersymmetric quantum mechanics and many particle systems.Comment: PTPTeX 20 pages, 27 eps figures, to be published in Prog.Theor.Phy

The Race between Technological Progress and Female Advancement: Changes in Gender and Skill Premia in OECD Countries

In recent decades, the male-female wage gap has fallen, while the skilled-unskilled wage gap has risen in advanced countries. The rate of decline in the gender wage gap tends to be greater for unskilled than skilled workers, while the rate of increase in the skill wage gap tends to be greater for male than female workers. To account for these trends, we develop an aggregate production function extended to allow for gender-specific capital-skill complementarity, and estimate it using shift-share instruments and cross-country panel data from OECD countries. We confirm that ICT equipment is more complementary not only to skilled than unskilled workers but also to female than male workers. Our results show that changes in gender and skill premia can be explained in terms of the race between progress in ICT and advances in educational attainment and female employment. In addition, we examine the implications of gender-specific capital-skill complementarity for changes in the labor share of income

Measuring Energy-saving Technological Change: International Trends and Differences

Technological change is essential for balancing economic growth and environmental sustainability. This study measures and documents energy-saving technological change to understand its trends in advanced countries over recent decades. We estimate aggregate production functions with factor-augmenting technology using cross-country panel data and shift-share instruments, thereby measuring and documenting energy-saving technological change. Our results show how energy-saving technological change varies across countries over time and the extent to which it contributes to economic growth in 12 OECD countries from the years 1978 to 2005