Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/322254 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
Quaderni - Working Paper DSE No. 1208
Publisher: 
Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche (DSE), Bologna
Abstract: 
Both the demand for skilled labor and the skill wage premium have become increasingly dispersed across the United States. This paper examines how technological change within occupations drives these uneven local developments. Combining a novel measure of technological change-capturing shifts in task intensities within 430 detailed occupations-with patent data and microdata, I demonstrate that innovation reallocates labor toward cognitiveintensive tasks, especially in densely populated areas. Motivated by this, I show that greater exposure to technological change increases the relative employment of college-educated workers while causing within-occupation wage declines for less-educated workers, widening the college wage premium.
Subjects: 
technological change
task intensities
local labour markets
innovation diffusion
college wage premium
JEL: 
J23
J24
J31
O33
R12
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc Logo
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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