Measuring the bias of technological change

Author / Creator

Doraszelski, Ulrich, author

Available as

Online

Summary

Technological change can increase the productivity of the various factors of production in equal terms or it can be biased towards a specific factor. We develop an estimator for production function...

Technological change can increase the productivity of the various factors of production in equal terms or it can be biased towards a specific factor. We develop an estimator for production functions when productivity is multi-dimensional. We directly assess the bias of technological change by measuring, at the level of the individual firm, how much of it is factor neutral and how much is labor augmenting. Applying our estimator to panel data from Spain, we find that technological change is indeed biased, with both its factor-neutral and its labor-augmenting component causing output to grow by about 2% per year.

Show More