Globalization, Technology and Skills: Evidence from Turkish Longitudinal Microdata (original) (raw)
Related papers
2013
This paper explores the causes of skill-based employment differentials within the Turkish manufacturing sector over the period 1980-2001. Turkey is taken as an example of a developing economy that, in that period, had been technologically advancing and becoming increasingly integrated with the world market. The empirical analysis is performed at firm level within a dynamic framework using a two-equation model that depicts the employment trends for skilled and unskilled workers separately. In particular, the System Generalized Method of Moments (GMM-SYS) procedure is applied to a panel dataset comprised of 17,462 firms. Our results confirm the theoretical expectation that developing countries face the phenomena of skill-biased technological change and skill-enhancing technology import, both leading to increasing the employment gap between skilled and unskilled workers. In particular, strong evidence of a relative skill bias emerges: both domestic and imported technologies increase th...
Technological Change and Skill-based Employment Disparities: Evidence from Turkey
2013
This paper explores the causes of skill-based employment differentials within the Turkish manufacturing sector over the period 1980-2001. Turkey is taken as an example of a developing economy that, in that period, had been technologically advancing and becoming increasingly integrated with the world market. The empirical analysis is performed at firm level within a dynamic framework using a two-equation model that depicts the employment trends for skilled and unskilled workers separately. In particular, the System Generalized Method of Moments (GMM-SYS) procedure is applied to a panel dataset comprised of 17,462 firms. Our results confirm the theoretical expectation that developing countries face the phenomena of skill-biased technological change and skill-enhancing technology import, both leading to increasing the employment gap between skilled and unskilled workers. In particular, strong evidence of a relative skill bias emerges: both domestic and imported technologies increase th...
Globalization and employment: Imported skill biased technological change in developing countries
IZA Discussion Paper No. 2797, Jena …, 2007
This paper discusses the occurrence of Skill-Enhancing Technology Import (SETI), namely the relationship between imports of embodied technology and widening skill-based employment differentials in a sample of low and middle income countries (LMICs). In doing so, this paper provides a direct measure of technology transfer at the sector level from high income countries (HICs), namely those economies which have already experienced the occurrence of skill-biased technological change, to LMICs. GMM techniques are applied to an original panel dataset comprising 28 manufacturing sectors for 23 countries over a decade. Econometric results provide robust evidence of the determinants of widening employment differentials in LMICs. In particular, capital-skill complementarity represents a source of relative skill-bias while SETI provides an absolute skill-bias effect on the employment trends of skilled and unskilled workers witnessed in these countries.
Trade, technology and skills: Evidence from Turkish microdata
Labour Economics, 2011
In this paper we report evidence on the relationship between trade openness, technology adoption and the relative demand for skilled labour in the Turkish manufacturing sector, using firm level data over the period 1980-2001. In a dynamic panel data setting, using a unique database comprising data from 17,462 firms, we estimate an augmented cost share equation whereby the wage bill share of skilled workers in a given firm is related to international exposure and technology adoption.
Implications of skill-biased technological change: International evidence
SSRN Electronic Journal, 1998
Demand for less-skilled workers plummeted in developed countries in the 1980s. In open economies, pervasive skill-biased technological change (SBTC) can explain this decline. SBTC tends to increase the domestic supply of unskillintensive goods by releasing less-skilled labor. The more countries experiencing a SBTC, the greater its potential to decrease the relative wages of less-skilled labor by increasing the world supply of unskill-intensive goods. We find strong evidence for pervasive SBTC in developed countries. Most industries increased the proportion of skilled workers despite generally rising or stable relative wages. Moreover, the same manufacturing industries simultaneously increased demand for skills in different countries. Many developing countries also show increased skill premiums, a pattern consistent with SBTC.
Trade Openness and the Demand for Skills: Evidence from Turkish Microdata
2008
In this paper we report evidence on the relationship between trade openness, technology adoption and relative demand for skilled labour in the Turkish manufacturing sector, using firm-level data over the period 1980-2001. In a dynamic panel data setting using a unique database of 17,462 firms, we estimate an augmented cost share equation whereby the wage bill share of skilled workers
International Technology Diffusion and Productivity Change in the Turkish Manufacturing Sector*
2020
Most new technologies are created in developed countries. In developing countries, contacts with the outside world, research and development (R&D), human capital, and technology diffusion play important roles in increasing innovation and productivity. Using panel data from manufacturing sectors from 2009 to 2014, this study examines the impact of various channels of technology diffusion, R&D, and human capital on labour productivity change in Turkey. According to the estimation results, the technology gap has had a positive effect on productivity change. This suggests a rapid adaptation to technology, and it may be a sign of future convergence with the technological frontier. Export intensity, improves technology transfer rate. Increase in export intensity is found to increase productivity change for the following year; and, increase in import penetration on productivity change is found to be positive in the current year and in the subsequent years. The impacts of foreign direct inv...
Skill-biased technological change and wage inequality in a developing country
2006
Developing countries adopt technologies by purchasing licences from technology leaders. If skilled and unskilled labour are perfect substitutes, we show tehnological change is skill-biased in the South simply because it is in the North, resulting in permanently rising wage inequality in the South. We model expanded educational access as producing relatively educated new cohorts of labour market entrants. This makes the market for skill-biased technologies more attractive, which generates accelerated wage inequality, but this is ultimately a levels e¤ect. Allowing for skilled and unskilled labour to be imperfect substitutes suggests the elasticity of substitution ( ) would have to be far higher for a rise in skill supply to raise wage inequality than for Northern skill-biased technological change to do so. Estimates of suggest expanded educational access is unlikely to increase wage inequality and it is more likely that global technology patterns will do so. The predictions of the mo...
of LaborSkill-Biased Technological Change and Skill-Enhancing Trade in Turkey
2013
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