The Economics of Has-Beens
34 Pages Posted: 10 Sep 2001 Last revised: 19 Aug 2022
There are 2 versions of this paper
The Economics of Has-Beens
Date Written: September 2001
Abstract
Evolution of technology causes human capital to become obsolete. We study this phenomenon in an overlapping generations setting, assuming it is hard to predict how technology will evolve, and that older workers find updating uneconomic. Among our results is the proposition that (under certain conditions) a more rapid pace of technological advance is especially unfavorable to the old in the sense that the implied within-industry division of output or income between young and old becomes much more skewed, i.e., a smaller number of young earn comparatively more. We apply our results to architecture, an occupation in which the has-beens phenomenon has had a particularly acute impact.
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
Changes in Relative Wages, 1963-1987: Supply and Demand Factors
By Lawrence F. Katz and Kevin M. Murphy
-
By Eli Berman, John Bound, ...
-
Computing Inequality: Have Computers Changed the Labor Market?
By David H. Autor, Lawrence F. Katz, ...
-
Information Technology, Workplace Organization and the Demand for Skilled Labor: Firm-Level Evidence
By Timothy Bresnahan, Erik Brynjolfsson, ...
-
Deunionization, Technical Change and Inequality
By Daron Acemoglu, Philippe Aghion, ...
-
The Skill Content of Recent Technological Change: An Empirical Exploration
By David H. Autor, Frank S. Levy, ...
-
The Skill Content of Recent Technological Change: An Empirical Exploration
By David H. Autor, Frank S. Levy, ...
-
How Computers Have Changed the Wage Structure: Evidence from Microdata, 1984-1989
-
Implications of Skill-Biased Technological Change: International Evidence
By Eli Berman, John Bound, ...