Technological Transitions and Educational Policies

This paper presents an out-of-equilibrium model to explain cross-country dierences in the capacity to absorb new skill-biased technologies. The usual mainstream viewpoint stressing the role of labour markets will be re-examined in a context characterized by a sequential structure of both the process of production and the skill formation, whose interaction brings about coordination failures harming the viabiity of the innovation process. In this light, educational policies play a crucial role in restoring the required coordination. The robust results of the simulations show that educational policies appear to be important both in rigid and in exible systems. In the former case, educational policies nanced by taxation allow the system to escape a low productivity nal equilibrium. In the latter, they contrast the nancial constraint associated to a large decrease in the unskilled wage. Altogether, a moderate degree of rigidity seems the most appropriate institutional environment to reach the targets of viability and of a full exploitation of the technological potential.