Since the early 1980s, technology has reduced the demand for low and medium-skill workers, the young, and women, especially in manufacturing industries. The column investigates which technologies have had the largest effect, and on which types of worker. It finds that robots and software raised the demand for high-skill workers, older workers, and men, especially in service industries.
Productivity and Innovation
Discrimination in access to financial services can prevent women from exploiting their entrepreneurial potential. This column reports on a lab-in-the-field experiment to test for the presence of gender discrimination in small business lending in Turkey. It finds that while unconditional loan approval rates are the same for male and female applicants, there exists a more subtle form of discrimination, with loan officers 30% more likely to make loan approval conditional on the presence of a guarantor when an application appears to come from a female instead of a male entrepreneur. This discrimination is concentrated among young, inexperienced, and gender-biased officers.
Japanese exports in electronic parts and components dramatically fell in value after the Global Crisis and have not recovered until today. This column investigates why Japan lost this comparative advantage. It argues that capital inflows seeking safe havens during the crisis led to a sharp appreciation of the yen and caused yen export prices to tumble relative to production costs. Plummeting profits then hindered Japanese firms from investing enough in capital and innovation to compete with rivals.
Productivity growth in southern Europe has been lower than in other developed countries. The column argues that this has in large part been caused by slow adoption of information technology, compounded by inefficient management. Without improvements in management practices, increased IT spending will not close the productivity gap.
Some commentators argue that globalisation is systematically connected to the real-wage and productivity stagnation seen across the developed world. This column analyses the relationship between international trade and worker outcomes in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit referendum, when the value of the sterling fell massively against other nations’ currencies. It finds that the rise in import costs from the sterling depreciation hurt wages and training. This relative decline in real earnings of workers has reinforced pre-existing real-wage stagnation; UK workers have not fared well since the referendum price rise.
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17 - 18 October 2019 / Florence, Italy / Florence School of Banking and Finance, European University Institute
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