Labor Demand and Information Technologies: Evidence for Spain, 1980-2005

Manuel Hidalgo, Jesús Rodríguez López () and José María O´Kean Alonso ()
Additional contact information
Jesús Rodríguez López: Department of Economics, Universidad Pablo de Olavide
José María O´Kean Alonso: Department of Economics, Universidad Pablo de Olavide
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Jesús Rodríguez-López ()

No 08.12, Working Papers from Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics

Abstract: Using the EU KLEMS dataset we test the capital-skill complementarity hypothesis in a cross-section of sectors in Spain between 1980 and 2005. We analyze three groups of workers, who are classed according to skill level: high, medium and low. Capital assets have been broken down into ICT (information and communication technologies) assets and non-ICT assets. Acquisition and usage costs of ICT assets declined throughout the period studied, both in absolute terms and relative to the other capital assets and workers. Our principal finding is that the substitutibility between workers and ICT assets falls as worker skill level rises. In fact, the ICT assets were strongly complement with highly skilled workers and were not substitutive with them. Throughout the period analyzed, the fraction of employed medium- and high-skill workers rose by 21% and 12%, respectively, to the disadvantage of low-skill workers. After decomposing these changes, we found that the latter were dominated by an ajustment within sectors more than by a composition effect or adjustment between sectors. These adjustments may be explained by reference to the estimated elasticities of substitution.

Keywords: capital-skill complementarity; ICT; translog cost function; elasticity of substitution. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E22 J24 J31 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2008-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-hrm, nep-ict, nep-knm and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.upo.es/serv/bib/wps/econ0812.pdf First version, 2008 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Labor demand and information technologies: evidence for Spain, 1980-2005 (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pab:wpaper:08.12

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics Carretera de Utrera km.1, 41013 Sevilla. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Publicación Digital - UPO ().