Irene Brambilla

Investment in ICT, productivity, and labor demand : the case of Argentina

This paper explores the impact of the adoption of information and communications technology on firm performance and labor market outcomes using a firm survey from the manufacturing sector in Argentina. The findings are that at the firm level adoption of information and communications technology leads to increases in firm productivity and wages, and that the effects are heterogeneous across firms, being larger for initially high-productivity and high-skill firms. The increase in wages occurs even after controlling for skill composition, implying that there are productivity and rent-sharing mechanisms at play. Further findings show that adoption of information and communications technology is associated with employment turnover as captured by the replacement of workers, elimination of occupations, creation of new occupations, and decrease in the share of unskilled workers, supporting the view that ICT is complementary with skilled labor. At the same time, there is an increase in employment across all skill categories. This result is compatible with positive output effects that drive employment, and with job turnover within the unskilled group.

Digital Technology Adoption and Jobs: A Model of Firm Heterogeneity

This paper develops a theoretical framework that expands the task-based models of technical progress and labor markets to allow for firm heterogeneity and wages that vary across firms. The model is compatible with the empirical observation that more productive firms are larger, are more skill intensive, and pay higher wages across skill categories. The model predicts that the decision to invest in information and communications technology depends on firm size and labor market characteristics. As a result of investment in information and communications technology firms grow, become more intensive in complex tasks, become more skilled intensive, and employ more skilled workers as long as skilled labor is complementary to information and communications technology. Employment of unskilled workers increases as well, provided that firm output growth is sufficiently high to overcome the negative substitution effect. Workers who remain employed are better off because their wage increases with information and communications technology. To the extent that skilled workers have more bargaining power than unskilled workers, or that their wage scheme is more tied to firm performance, wage inequality at the firm level increases with information and communications technology.