Research

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 between skill inputs, also explain changes in skill use within occupations. 

We study how firms and workers adjust when previously restricted migrants gain full and portable work rights in a labor market with substantial informality. We exploit the 2007 EU accession of Bulgaria and Romania, which granted unrestricted work rights to Italy's largest migrant group. Using matched employer–employee administrative data and an IV-DID design, we find that firms suddenly and persistently shift employment composition toward EU07 workers, compressing the native employment share without reducing native hiring or increasing separations. We don't detect any significant change in wages for either natives or EU07 workers. For migrants, this null effect reflects offsetting compositional shifts as newly observed and incumbent EU07 workers enter the formal workforce with different wage trajectories. Consistent with a shift in bargaining power toward workers, EU07 migrants experienced significant gains in job mobility and job security. Overall, the evidence suggests that removing legal restrictions reshaped firms’ personnel choices and altered migrants’ employment relationships, improving their outside options, bargaining position, and access to more secure jobs.

The wage gap between black and white Americans has narrowed between the 1960s and the 1970s, but its progress stalled since 1980. This study argues that routine biased technological change (RBTC) contributed to dampening wage gap convergence in 1980-2000, having a differential impact across races and along the wage distribution. Thus, I present new empirical evidence on occupational patterns by race and on determinants of wage disparities along the wage distribution, and rationalize them with an RBTC model in which firms engage in statistical discrimination. I show that, surprisingly, the share of employment in routine intensive occupations has increased for black workers, in contrast with a significant decrease observed for white workers. I decompose the wage gap changes using the Oaxaca-RIF methodology and show that differences in occupational sorting of the workforce increase wage disparities, thwarting wage convergence between races at the bottom of the wage distribution. Together, these new empirical findings and model provide insights to better understand the mechanisms behind racial disparities at the end of the 20th century.