CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 1,767Labor market dynamics and wage inequalityHistorical Economic and Social StudiesEconomic Theory and Policy

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 129 of the 132 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Technical Change, Inequality, and the Labor Market

Acemoglu, Daron·2002·Journal of Economic Literature
DOI 10.1257/jel.40.1.7
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

This essay discusses the effect of technical change on wage inequality. I argue that the behavior of wages and returns to schooling indicates that technical change has been skill-biased during the past sixty years. Furthermore, the recent increase in inequality is most likely due to an acceleration in skill bias. In contrast to twentieth century developments, most technical change during the nineteenth century appears to be skill-replacing. I suggest that this is because the increased supply of unskilled workers in the English cities made the introduction of these technologies profitable. On the other hand, the twentieth-century has been characterized by skill-biased technical change because the rapid increase in the supply of skilled workers has induced the development of skill-complementary technologies. The recent acceleration in skill bias is in turn likely to have been a response to the acceleration in the supply of skills during the past several decades.

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1257/jel.40.1.7

Cites

129 of 129 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Show all 132 references

Research works printed but not linked: 64

  1. Abramovitz Moses, 1956, Amer. Econ. Rev., 46
  2. Acemoglu Daron, 1996, Quart. J. Econ., 111
  3. Acemoglu Daron, 1998, Quart. J. Econ., 113
  4. Acemoglu Daron, 1999, Amer. Econ. Rev., 89
  5. Acemoglu Daron, 1999, J. Polit. Econ., 107
  6. Acemoglu Daron, 2001, Quart. J. Econ., 116
  7. Ahmad Syed, 1966, Econ. J., 56
  8. Angrist Joshua, 1995, Amer. Econ. Rev., 85
  9. Autor Alan Krueger, 1998, Quart. J. Econ., 113
  10. Bartel Ann P, 1987, Rev. Econ. Statist., 69
  11. Bartel Ann, 1998, J. Labor Econ., 16
  12. Berman John Bound, 1994, Quart. J. Econ., 109
  13. Berman John Bound, 1998, Quart. J. Econ., 113
  14. Blau Francine D, 1996, J. Polit. Econ., 104
  15. Borjas George J, 1995, Quart. J. Econ., 110
  16. Ellen Dulberger Robert Gordon, 1998, J. Econ. Perspect., 12
  17. Bound John, 1992, Amer. Econ. Rev., 82
  18. Bowles Herbert Gintis, 2001, J. Econ. Lit., 39
  19. Brendt Catherine Morrison, 1994, J. Econometrics, 65
  20. Card David E, 2000, Quart. J. Econ., 107
  21. Card David, 2001, Quart. J. Econ., 116
  22. Card Francis Kramartz, 1996, Can. J. Econ.
  23. Caselli Francesco, 1999, Amer. Econ. Rev., 89
  24. David Paul, 1990, Amer. Econ. Rev., 80
  25. Diebold David Neumark, 1997, J. Labor Econ., 15
  26. DiNardo John, 1997, Quart. J. Econ., 112
  27. Doms Timothy Dunne, 1997, Quart. J. Econ., 112
  28. Entorf Horst, 1998, Europ. Econ. Rev., 41
  29. Feenstra Robert, 1999, Quart. J. Econ., 114
  30. Foster Andrew, 1996, Amer. Econ. Rev., 86
  31. Friedberg Rachel, 1997, RI: Brown U. Population Studies and Training Center work. paper, 97
  32. Galor Oded, 1998, Amer. Econ. Rev., 87
  33. Galor Oded, 2000, Quart. J. Econ., 115
  34. Goldin Claudia, 1998, Quart. J. Econ., 113
  35. Goldin Claudia, 2000, J. Econ. Hist.
  36. Goldin Claudia, 1992, Quart. J. Econ., 107
  37. Gottschalk Peter, 1997, J. Econ. Perspect., 11
  38. Gottschalk Peter, 1997, J. Econ. Lit., 35
  39. Greenwood Zvi Hercowtiz, 1997, Amer. Econ. Rev., 87
  40. Griliches Zvi, 1969, Rev. Econ. Statist., 51
  41. Hayami Yujiro, 1970, J. Polit. Econ., 77
  42. Ichniowski Kathryn Shaw, 1997, Amer. Econ. Rev., 87
  43. James John A, 1985, J. Econ. Hist., 45
  44. Johnson George, 1997, J. Econ. Perspect., 11
  45. Juhn Kevin M, 1993, J. Polit. Econ., 101
  46. Katz Lawrence, 1992, Quart. J. Econ., 107
  47. Kennedy Charles, 1964, Econ. J., 74
  48. Kiley Michael, 1999, Econ. J., 109
  49. Krueger Alan, 1993, Quart. J. Econ., 110
  50. Krueger Alan, 1999, Amer. Econ. Rev., 89
  51. Lee David S, 1999, Quart. J. Econ., 114
  52. Lloyd-Ellis Huw, 1999, Amer. Econ. Rev., 89
  53. Machin Stephen, 1998, Quart. J. Econ., 113
  54. Marglin Stephen A, 1974, Rev. Radical Polit. Econ., 3
  55. Murphy Kevin M, 1992, Quart. J. Econ., 107
  56. Newell Adam Jaffee, 1999, Quart. J. Econ., 114
  57. Nickell Stephen, 1996, Oxford Rev. Econ. Pol., 11
  58. Pierce Brooks, 2001, Quart. J. Econ.
  59. Samuelson Paul, 1965, Rev. Econ. Statist., 47
  60. Schultz Theodore, 1975, J. Econ. Lit., 13
  61. Thesmar David, 2000, Quart. J. Econ., 115
  62. Welch Finis, 1970, J. Polit. Econ., 78
  63. Welch Finis, 1973, Amer. Econ. Rev., 63
  64. Willis Robert, 1975, J. Polit. Econ., 87

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Acemoglu, D.
Venue
Journal of Economic Literature
Publisher
American Economic Association
Published
2002-03
Volume
40
Issue
1
Pages
7-72
ISSN
0022-0515 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1257/jel.40.1.7
OpenAlex
W2106759695
Cited by
1,767
References
132
Citations by year
2026: 124 · 2025: 181 · 2024: 131 · 2023: 123 · 2022: 131 · 2021: 120 · 2020: 86 · 2019: 69 · 2018: 82 · 2017: 77 · 2016: 73 · 2015: 59 · 2014: 57 · 2013: 66 · 2012: 46
FWCI
65.44
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
  • Journal of Economic Literature (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Labor market dynamics and wage inequality
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Historical Economic and Social Studies
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › General Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economic Theory and Policy
Keywords
skill-biased technological change, wage inequality, returns to education, labor supply, 19th-century industrialization, English cities, technological change

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review