Antonietti, Roberto
(2006)
The skill content of technological change.
Some conjectures on the role of education and job-training in reducing
the timing of new technology adoption.
p. 25.
DOI
10.6092/unibo/amsacta/2054.
Full text available as:
Abstract
This positional contribution has a twofold aim: the first is to explore the recent empirical
literature developed around the issue of how the adoption of new technologies within the
firm has changed the skill requirements of occupations; the second is to conjecture on the
relationship, and on the relative sign, between technology adoption and firm sponsored onthe-
job training. The basic idea is that the time-consuming dimension of the adoption
process plays a direct role both in determining the profitability of the investment in new
technology and in assessing the size of the productivity slowdown the firm eventually
occurs after its introduction. On the extent that the timing of adoption depends on the
workers’ skill composition and on the distance between the skills acquired for the job and
the skills required by the job, the deep understanding of the interplay between the
mechanisms of human capital accumulation can be helpful in order for the firm to set
suitable and efficient job-training strategies. During the last two decades the discussion
around the impact of technological change on workers’ human capital has been intense: the
rapid diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICT) and computer-based
machines (CNC, CAD), together with the large increase in the supply of highly-educated
workers and rising returns to education, favoured the argument that technological change is
characterized by a skill-biased nature (SBTC), leading to substantial changes in the division
of labour and shifting labor demand towards employees with higher levels of education. On
this purpose, different approaches have developed in the last decades that provide different
evidence to a common research question. While a lot of national and international evidence
still continues to support the SBTC hypothesis by employing ‘traditional’ aggregate
measures of technological change and indirect measures of skill upgrading, a smaller
literature is emerging that considers the heterogeneity of both technologies and skills at the
workplace and aims at determining the demand of skills by the tasks occupations require.
Even if new and interesting results emerge, many ‘black holes’ still remain, the most
important of which seem to be the lack of theoretical and empirical models analyzing the
role that school education and on-the-job training, and their interplay, can play in reducing
the timing of new technology
Abstract
This positional contribution has a twofold aim: the first is to explore the recent empirical
literature developed around the issue of how the adoption of new technologies within the
firm has changed the skill requirements of occupations; the second is to conjecture on the
relationship, and on the relative sign, between technology adoption and firm sponsored onthe-
job training. The basic idea is that the time-consuming dimension of the adoption
process plays a direct role both in determining the profitability of the investment in new
technology and in assessing the size of the productivity slowdown the firm eventually
occurs after its introduction. On the extent that the timing of adoption depends on the
workers’ skill composition and on the distance between the skills acquired for the job and
the skills required by the job, the deep understanding of the interplay between the
mechanisms of human capital accumulation can be helpful in order for the firm to set
suitable and efficient job-training strategies. During the last two decades the discussion
around the impact of technological change on workers’ human capital has been intense: the
rapid diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICT) and computer-based
machines (CNC, CAD), together with the large increase in the supply of highly-educated
workers and rising returns to education, favoured the argument that technological change is
characterized by a skill-biased nature (SBTC), leading to substantial changes in the division
of labour and shifting labor demand towards employees with higher levels of education. On
this purpose, different approaches have developed in the last decades that provide different
evidence to a common research question. While a lot of national and international evidence
still continues to support the SBTC hypothesis by employing ‘traditional’ aggregate
measures of technological change and indirect measures of skill upgrading, a smaller
literature is emerging that considers the heterogeneity of both technologies and skills at the
workplace and aims at determining the demand of skills by the tasks occupations require.
Even if new and interesting results emerge, many ‘black holes’ still remain, the most
important of which seem to be the lack of theoretical and empirical models analyzing the
role that school education and on-the-job training, and their interplay, can play in reducing
the timing of new technology
Document type
Monograph
(Working Paper)
Creators
Keywords
ICT, skill, timing of adoption, adjustment costs, education, training
Subjects
DOI
Deposit date
24 Mar 2006
Last modified
17 Feb 2016 14:49
URI
Other metadata
Document type
Monograph
(Working Paper)
Creators
Keywords
ICT, skill, timing of adoption, adjustment costs, education, training
Subjects
DOI
Deposit date
24 Mar 2006
Last modified
17 Feb 2016 14:49
URI
Downloads
Downloads
Staff only: