We document the growth in higher education costs and tuition over the past 50 years. To explain these trends, we develop a general equilibrium model with skilland sector-biased technical change. Finding the model’s parameters through a combination of estimation and calibration, we show that it can explain the rise in college costs between 1961 and 2009, along with the increase in college attain...

US median wages have stagnated for 30 years, yet this masks a surprising amount of variation among different groups. A large literature documents that skill-biased technical change (SBTC) has led to substantial real wage increases on average for those with at least a college degree, and declines on average for those with less education. However, SBTC is not a single dimensional construct. We id...

Research in psychology indicates that individuals often make inferences regarding unknown individual qualities based on potentially irrelevant (but socially observable) information. This paper explores occupational choices when individuals receive imprecise signals regarding ability and use the observable characteristics of previously successful individuals to infer own ability. Individuals who...

The cost reduction of green tea processing, the control of fossil fuel resources, and the curbing of corresponding greenhouse gases emission depend on the energy efficiency of tea processing units. Therefore, it is imperative to identify and analyze factors determining energy efficiency of these agro-industrial units. To this end, the present descriptive survey was carried out on 40 managers of...

This paper presents firm-level evidence on the dynamics of the relative demand for non-manual workers in Italian manufacturing during the 1990s. The analysis provides a number of interesting results. First, within-firm skill upgrading is the main determinant of the increase in the non-manual wage bill share. By contrast, demand changes associated to trade have shifted employment away from skill...

This paper reports the results of a study that investigates changes in skill requirements of information systems professionals in Singapore. The study coded representative job advertisements that appeared in the newspapers over a period of fifteen years – from 1983 to 1998. The coding results indicate that job profiles for programmers and IS managers have not changed dramatically over the years...

Competence in operating IT on one hand aids the routine business activities related to an accountants’ work and on the other helps them create an environment where these technologies operate at their optimum level for the strategic internal and external advantage of the business. Recent studies indicate that accounting businesses are now customer-oriented, information-driven, project-based, fla...

This study tracked changes in skill requirements of information technology (IT) professionals in Hong Kong. The study coded representative job advertisements that appeared in the newspapers over a period of fourteen years – from 1990 to 2004. As there are many IT job titles, this study focused on three – namely, programmer, systems analyst, and IT manager. The coding results showed that there a...