Essays in labor economics

My dissertation is a collection of three essays that consider various aspects of income inequality and the demand for skill. The first chapter uses the advent of the US Interstate Highway System to examine the effect of reducing trade barriers on the relative demand for skilled labor. The Interstate Highway System was designed to connect major cities, to serve national defense, and to connect the US to Canada and Mexico. As an unintended consequence, many rural counties were connected to the highway system. I find that these counties experienced an increase in trade-related activities, such as trucking and retail sales. By increasing trade, the highways raised the relative demand for skilled manufacturing workers in skill-abundant counties and reduced it elsewhere, consistent with the predictions of the Heckscher-Ohlin model. The second chapter examines the effect of the division of labor on the demand for information processing. I find that manufacturing industries with a more complex division of labor employ relatively more clerks, who process information that is used to coordinate production. An early information technology (IT) revolution that took place around 1900 raised the relative demand for clerks in manufacturing, and significantly more so in industries with a complex division of labor.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Economics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Michaels, Guy, Ph. D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Daron Acemoglu and Joshua Angrist.

• Economics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/34501

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/34501