How does technological innovation and diffusion affect inter-industry workersメ mobility?

Does technological change amount to accumulation of general, and so transferable, human capital? To approach this question I rely on a theoretical framework in which the “technology distance” between industries reduces inter-industry transferability of workers’ skill. Empirically, I use US panel data on individual intra-industry and inter-industry mobility decisions between 1982 and 1990, a period of rapid technological change in all manufacturing sectors, to estimate amixed logit econometric specification that does not rely on the IIA assumption. I find support to the main idea that technological innovation and diffusion have different effects on workers’ industrial mobility patterns. “Knowledge spillovers”, differently from“rent spillovers”, indeedboost the chances ofworkers’ inter-industrymobility. Surprisingly, this ismore consistently so in low-tech industries than in high-tech industries. Consistently with the expectations developed in the theoretical framework, in low-tech industries skilled workers respond more sharply to technology diffusion than unskilled workers. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. (. . .) Technological innovations, institutional reforms, and fresh ideas do not affect the aggregate level of economicactivity abruptly: theyneed todiffuse fromregion to region, from activity to activity, cross-boundaries and seas, be evaluated, adapted, and refined. Their promoters have to dislodge the entrenched, persuade the skeptic, and reassure the fearful. Mokyr (2005), p. 285