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The U.K. as a technological follower: higher education expansion and the college wage premium

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posted on 2023-06-10, 04:34 authored by Richard Blundell, David Green, Wenchao JinWenchao Jin
The proportion of U.K. people with university degrees tripled between 1993 and 2015. However, over the same period the time trend in the college wage premium has been extraordinarily flat. We show that these patterns cannot be explained by composition changes. Instead, we present a model in which firms choose between centralized and decentralized organizational forms and demonstrate that it can explain the main patterns. We also show the model has implications that differentiate it from both the exogenous skill-biased technological change model and the endogenous invention model, and that U.K. data fit with those implications. The result is a consistent picture of the transformation of the U.K. labour market in the last two decades.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

The Review Of Economic Studies

ISSN

1467-937X

Publisher

Blackwell Publishing

Issue

1

Volume

89

Page range

142-180

Department affiliated with

  • Economics Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2022-09-02

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2022-09-02

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2022-09-01

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