Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/56638 
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
SFB 649 Discussion Paper No. 2012-013
Publisher: 
Humboldt University of Berlin, Collaborative Research Center 649 - Economic Risk, Berlin
Abstract: 
This paper uses the task-based view of technological change to study employment and wage polarization at the level of local labor markets in Germany between 1979 and 2007. In order to directly relate technological change to subsequent employment trends, we exploit variation in the regional task structure which reflects a region's potential of being affected by computerization. We build a measure of regional routine intensity to test whether there has been a reallocation from routine towards non-routine labor conditional on a region's initial computerization potential. We find that routine intensive regions have witnessed a differential reallocation towards non-routine employment and an increase in low- and medium-skilled service occupations. Our results corroborate the predictions of the task-based framework and confirm previous evidence on employment polarization in Germany in the sense that employment growth deteriorates at the middle of the skill distribution relative to the lower and the upper tail of the distribution.
Subjects: 
job tasks
polarization
technological change
service occupations
regional labor markets
JEL: 
J24
J31
J62
O33
R23
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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