Over the 1980s and 1990s the wage differentials between men and women (with similar observable characteristics) declined significantly. At the same time, the returns to education increased. It has been suggested that these two trends may reflect a common change in the relative price of a skill...

This paper focuses on the bi-directional interaction between technology adoption and labor market conditions. We examine cross-city differences in PC-adoption, relative wages, and changes in relative wages over the period 1980-2000 to evaluate whether the patterns conform to the predictions of a...

The introduction and diffusion of personal computers are widely viewed as a technological revolution. Using U.S. metropolitan area–level panel data, this paper asks whether links between PC adoption, educational attainment, and the return to skill conform to a model of technological...

Male-female wage gaps declined significantly over the 1980s and 1990s, while returns to education increased. In this paper, we use cross-city data to explore whether, like the return to education, the change in the gender wage gap may reflect changes in skill prices induced by the diffusion of...

Physical capital represents an important input to the production of higher education--the essential services of buildings, equipment, and land--for which we have only highly inadequate measures. This paper has three objectives: to report estimates of the value of the capital stocks used by 3,148...

Research on the labor market impact of immigration typically relies on a single-good model of production with separable capital. This article discusses theory and evidence that suggest that this standard model is too simple to capture the labor market impact of immigration. A reasonable level of...

In this chapter we analyze immigration and its effect on urban and regional economies focusing on productivity and labor markets. While immigration policies are typically national, the effects of international migrants are often more easily identified on local economies. The reason is that their...