The Adjustment Effects of a Skilled Labour Supply Shock

在过去的几十年里，许多国家在技能回报和收入不平等方面发生了迅速的变化。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，技能的提高可能会产生溢出效应，比如对创新的影响，随着熟练工作成本的降低，经济的竞争力可能会发生变化。对于熟练劳动力供应冲击对工资和技能调整的规模和速度，以及它对当地经济的溢出和影响，我们知之甚少。我建议通过重点研究柏林墙倒塌后，相对熟练的东德人向西德大规模移民所引发的劳动力供应冲击，来研究这些反应。这项研究的见解对工资、就业、技能和竞争力方面的政策具有重要影响，以应对结构性经济转型，不仅对德国，而且对大多数其他国家都是如此。特别是，该项目将解决以下主要问题。(1)较多的技术工人是否会降低技术工人的工资？短期和长期工资和就业调整的动力是什么？为了更好地理解这些反应，我还将研究不同租金分享对生产率的影响和变化，因为熟练工人的讨价还价能力随着他们的相对供应而变化。(2)增加熟练工人供应在经济中的溢出效应是什么？价格调整的一个影响是，获取技能和在特定职业工作的激励措施发生了变化。例如，我将使用关于特定职业的任务强度的数据来记录这些影响。通过构建一个关于东德和西德专利的新数据集，我还将检验更多的熟练工人在多大程度上促进了当地的创新。(3)技能构成的变化是否会通过改变当地的比较优势来影响当地经济的长期轨迹？我将评估企业在应对熟练劳动力供应冲击时的创建和发展，并分析不同企业和行业对可贸易和非贸易商品的反应差异。拟议中的分析的一个特别优势是其研究设计，它使用一个历史性事件来产生数据中的准实验差异。1989年11月柏林墙倒塌后，直到20世纪90年代初，大约200万东德人搬到了西德，到1992年，西德的劳动力增加了3%以上。这一大规模移民为大规模熟练劳动力供应冲击提供了一个特别有用的案例，因为1989年后从东德到西德的移民是突然的、出乎意料的，而且东德和西德人说的是同一种语言。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令人困惑的内生因素(如当地普遍的经济状况)分开。为了克服这一困难，我建议构建关于东德人在西德的历史定居模式的数据，我用这些数据来预测柏林墙倒塌后新来的东德人的位置。为了实施这项研究设计，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，我预计我的贡献将推动关于技能、工资和比较经济优势的演变以应对劳动力市场冲击的学术和政策辩论。彻底了解这些影响对于工人、公司、政府和国际机构做出明智的政策选择至关重要。

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.