Authors
Fabian Eckert
Publication date
2019/2/5
Journal
mimeograph, Yale University
Description
Between 1980 and 2010, the college wage premium in US labor markets with larger initial shares of high-skill service employment grew substantially faster than the nationwide average. I show that this trend can be explained within the context of a model of interregional trade, where a reduction in communication costs magnifies regional specialization in high-skill services, raising the skill premium in service-exporting regions and reducing it in service-importing regions. Quantitatively, I show that the decline in communication costs I infer from sectoral trade imbalances can explain a substantial part of the differential skill premium growth across US labor markets in the data. These regional changes aggregate to account for 30 percent of the rise in the overall US college wage premium between 1980 and 2010.
Total citations
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