Technological Change, Human Capital, and Income Distribution

本研究的目的是探索技术变革、人力和物质资本投资以及收入分配之间的一些联系。该项目的第一部分是受到最近实证工作结果的启发，这些结果表明，收入分配中的代际流动程度远低于早期研究所表明的水平。本项目将共同分析不平等持续存在的重要渠道。以前的理论模型每次只处理一个渠道，而忽略了一个重要的渠道。这部分项目的目标是开发一个理论上易于处理的模型，可以根据美国的数据进行校准。了解产生持久性的机制对于讨论各种政策措施在提高家庭背景本身没有什么乐观理由的儿童的收入前景方面的效力至关重要。例如，为了计算增加公共支出对低收入家庭儿童的教育投资的好处，人们需要知道更高的投资可能会提高孩子的最终收入，更高的公共支出可能会在多大程度上被更低的私人支出所抵消，以及对孩子的任何好处也会在多大程度上影响孩子自己的后代。该项目的第二部分的动机是有证据表明，20世纪80年代，由于技能偏向的技术变革，美国熟练工人的工资溢价大幅增加。然而，20世纪80年代的经历并非个例：本世纪以来，美国经历了几次技能溢价的扩张和压缩。随机动态一般均衡模型将用于研究膨胀和压缩时期作为对随机、技能偏向、技术变化的均衡响应。

9511275 Stokey The goal of this research is to explore some of the links between technological change, investments in human and physical capital, and the distribution of income. The first part of the project is motivated by the results of recent empirical work that shows that the degree of intergenerational mobility in the income distribution is far lower than earlier studies had suggested. This project will analyze together the important channels for the persistence of inequality. Pervious theoretical models have treated these channels one at a time ald neglected altogether one important channel. The goal of this part of the project is to develop a theoretically tractable model that can be calibrated to U.S. data. Understanding the mechanisms through which persistence is generated is critical for debates about the efficacy of various policy measures in raising the earnings prospects of children whose family backgrounds alone give little reason for optimism. For example, to calculate the benefits of increased public expenditures on educational investments in children from low-income families, one needs to know how much higher investments are likely to raise the child's eventual earnings, to what extent higher public expenditures are likely to be offset by lower private expenditures, and the extent to which any benefits to the child will also affect the child's own descendants. The second part of the project is motivated by the evidence of a dramatic increase in the wage premium for skilled labor in the U.S. in the 1980s due to skill biased technological change. The experience of the 1980s was not unique, however: the U.S. has seen several extended periods of expansion and compression in the skill premium during this century. A stochastic dynamic general equilibrium model will be used to study such periods of expansion and compression as equilibrium responses to stochastic, skill biased, technological change.