Search Results
Working Paper
Immigrants' Legalization and Firms: Evidence from the 2007 EU Enlargement
How do firms respond to permanent changes in the legal status of a substantial group of migrants? We study the effects of the entry to the European Union of Bulgaria and Romania in the Italian labor market. This event was particularly relevant for Italy, where Romanians constitute approximately one fifth of the immigrant population. We use administrative employer-employee data on the universe of private-sector workers and an IV-DID design to identify the effects of this change in migrants' legal status on firms' personnel and performance. Firms exhibit an increase in the share of migrant ...
Working Paper
The Nature of Technological Change 1960-2016
We present a unified technological explanation of both the movement of workers across jobs using different skills and the changes in skill use within jobs. An envelope-theorem approach allows us to estimate relative skill-productivity growth from worker mobility using OLS while making minimal assumptions on each occupation's production function. Using six decades of data, we conclude that routine-cognitive- and finger-dexterity-skill productivity grew rapidly and abstract- and social-skill productivity grew slowly - a form of "skill bias." These effects, along with our estimated relationships ...
Working Paper
Technological Change and Racial Wage Gaps
The wage gap between Black and white Americans narrowed in the 1960s-1970s but stagnated after 1980. This study argues that routine-biased technological change (RBTC) contributed to this stagnation by affecting Black and white male workers differently across the wage distribution. Using new empirical evidence on occupational patterns and wage determinants for these workers, I rationalize these patterns with a novel RBTC theoretical framework. Contrary to expectations, Black workers' employment in routine-intensive occupations increased, while white workers experienced a significant decline. ...