Low skilled workers have been facing declining real wages during the 80s in the US, while high skilled workers gained in the same period.This decrease in the relative wage of the low skilled provoked a lively debate on the causes of the observed decline.A lot of academic authors have opposed to...

This thesis is centered around two empirical questions. The first question deals with the paradox that the ICT revolution does not pay off with higher productivity growth for the ICT- users. The interaction between production and knowledge accumulation and the ¿general- purpose' nature of the...

We analyze the social optimality of growth and product variety in a model of endogenous growth. The model contains two sectors, one assembly sector producing a homogenous consumption good, and one intermediate goods sector producing a differentiated input used in the assembly sector. Growth...

Employed technologies differ vastly across countries. Within countries many technologies that would obviously improve firms’ efficiency are not adopted. This paper explains these observations by emphasizing that a new technology positively affects workers by lowering prices and increasing...

This paper assesses empirically whether R&D spillovers are important and whether they originate from domestic or foreign activities. Data for eleven sectors are used to explain the impact on total factor productivity of R&D by the sector itself, by other Dutch sectors and by foreign sectors. We...

Where is the productivity growth from the IT revolution? Why did the skill premium rise sharply in the early eighties? Were these phenomena related? This paper examines these questions in a general equilibrium model of growth. Technological progress in firms is driven by research aimed at...