The Adjustment Effects of a Skilled Labour Supply Shock

熟练劳动力供给冲击的调整效应

• 批准号: ES/R011443/1
• 负责人: Alice Kuegler
• 金额: $ 30.92万
• 依托单位: University College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FR011443%2F1
• 关键词: Adjustment; Effects; Skilled; Labour; Supply

Over the last decades many countries have seen rapid changes in the returns to skills and in income inequality. Theory predicts that a sudden increase in the supply of skilled workers is likely to reduce skilled wages. In the longer run skills can adjust, increased skills can have spillovers such as on innovation, and the competitiveness of the economy may change as skilled work becomes cheaper. We know little about the size and speed of adjustments of wages and skills to a skilled labour supply shock, and its spillovers and effects on the local economy. I propose to study these responses by focusing on the labour supply shock induced by the mass migration of relatively skilled East Germans to West Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The insights from this research have important implications for policies on wages, employment, skills and competitiveness in response to structural economic transformations, not only for Germany but for most other countries. In particular, the project will address the following main questions. (1) Does a larger number of skilled workers reduce the wages of skilled workers? What are the dynamics of wage and employment adjustments in the short and longer run? For understanding these responses better, I will also examine productivity effects and changes due to differential rent sharing, as the bargaining power of skilled workers changes with their relative supply.(2) What are the spillovers of increasing the supply of skilled workers in the economy? One effect of price adjustments is that the incentives to acquire skills and to work in specific occupations change. I will document these effects, for example, by using data on the task intensity of specific occupations. By constructing a new dataset on patenting in East and West Germany, I will also examine to what extent larger numbers of skilled workers foster local innovation.(3) Do changes in the skill composition affect the long-term trajectory of a local economy by changing its comparative advantage? I will assess the creation and growth of firms in response to the skilled labour supply shock, and analyse the difference in responses across firms and industries for tradable and non-tradable goods.A particular strength of the proposed analysis is its research design, which uses a historic event to generate quasi-experimental variation in the data. After the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, around two million East Germans moved to West Germany until the early 1990s, increasing the West German labour force by over three percent by 1992. This large-scale immigration provides a particularly useful case study of a large skilled labour supply shock because the migration from East to West Germany after 1989 was sudden and unanticipated, and East and West Germans speak the same language. Evidence on the causal effects of labour supply shocks is scarce because it is difficult to isolated causal outcomes from confounding endogenous factors such as prevailing local economic conditions. To overcome this difficulty, I propose to construct data on the historical settlement patterns of East Germans in West Germany, which I use to predict the location of newly arriving East Germans after the fall of the Berlin Wall. For implementing this research design, I will extract novel information from two detailed secure-access administrative datasets, which have not been used in this context before.The scientific output of the proposed research is aimed at publication in top academic journals, and I expect my contributions to advance the academic as well as the policy debate on the evolution of skills, wages, and comparative economic advantage in response to labour market shocks. A thorough understanding of these effects is crucial for workers, firms, governments and international institutions to make informed policy choices.

在过去几十年中，许多国家在技能回报和收入不平等方面发生了迅速变化。理论预测，技术工人供应的突然增加可能会降低技术工人的工资。从长远来看，技能可以调整，技能的提高可以产生溢出效应，例如对创新的溢出效应，随着技术工作变得更便宜，经济的竞争力可能会发生变化。我们对熟练劳动力供应冲击导致的工资和技能调整的规模和速度及其对当地经济的溢出效应和影响知之甚少。我建议研究这些反应，集中在劳动力供应冲击引起的相对熟练的东德人大规模迁移到西德德国后，柏林墙在1989年的秋天。从这项研究的见解有重要的影响，对工资，就业，技能和竞争力的政策，以应对结构性经济转型，不仅对德国，但对大多数其他国家。特别是，该项目将解决以下主要问题。(1)技术工人多了，技术工人的工资会不会降低？短期和长期内工资和就业调整的动态是什么？为了更好地理解这些反应，我还将研究由于不同的租金分享而产生的生产率效应和变化，因为技术工人的议价能力随着他们的相对供给而变化。(2)在经济中增加技术工人的供应有什么溢出效应？价格调整的一个影响是，获取技能和从事特定职业的激励因素发生了变化。例如，我将通过使用特定职业的任务强度数据来记录这些影响。通过构建一个关于德国东西部专利申请的新数据集，我还将研究大量技术工人在多大程度上促进了当地创新。(3)技能构成的变化是否通过改变地方经济的比较优势而影响其长期轨迹？我将评估公司的创建和增长，以应对熟练劳动力供应的冲击，并分析不同的公司和行业的可贸易和不可贸易商品的反应的差异。建议的分析的一个特别的优势是其研究设计，它使用一个历史事件，以产生准实验数据的变化。1989年11月柏林倒塌后，约有200万东德人移居德国，直到1990年代初，西德的劳动力增加了3%。这种大规模的移民提供了一个特别有用的案例，研究了大量熟练劳动力供应的冲击，因为1989年后从东德到德国的移民是突然的，出乎意料的，而且东德和西德人说同一种语言。关于劳动力供应冲击的因果影响的证据很少，因为很难将因果结果与当地经济状况等混杂的内在因素分开。为了克服这一困难，我建议构建关于东德人在西德德国的历史定居模式的数据，我用这些数据来预测柏林围墙倒塌后新抵达的东德人的位置。为了实现这一研究设计，我将从两个详细的安全访问管理数据集中提取新的信息，这两个数据集以前从未在此背景下使用过。拟议研究的科学成果旨在发表在顶级学术期刊上，我希望我的贡献能够推动学术和政策辩论，包括技能，工资，以及应对劳动力市场冲击的相对经济优势。彻底了解这些影响对于工人、企业、政府和国际机构做出明智的政策选择至关重要。