Schooling Supply and the Structure of Production: Evidence from US States 1950-1990 / Antonio Ciccone, Giovanni Peri.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ciccone, Antonio.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Peri, Giovanni.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w17683.

NBER working paper series no. w17683

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2011.

Summary:

We find that over the period 1950-1990, US states absorbed increases in the supply of schooling due to tighter compulsory schooling and child labor laws mostly through within-industry increases in the schooling intensity of production. Shifts in the industry composition towards more schooling-intensive industries played a less important role. To try and understand this finding theoretically, we consider a free trade model with two goods/industries, two skill types, and many regions that produce a fixed range of differentiated varieties of the same goods. We find that a calibrated version of the model can account for shifts in schooling supply being mostly absorbed through within-industry increases in the schooling intensity of production even if the elasticity of substitution between varieties is substantially higher than estimates in the literature.

Notes:

Print version record

December 2011.