The contribution of skilled and unskilled workers to capital productivity: the case of Belgian firms
摘要
We decompose capital productivity growth into four factors: (i) efficiency change, (ii) technological change, (iii) skilled labor–capital accumulation, and (iv) unskilled labor–capital accumulation. This decomposition recognizes the particular relationships between capital, skills, efficiency, and technological change. We rely on a non-parametric approach to estimate the decomposition dimensions. We use our new approach to study the capital productivity changes of Belgian firms in two sectors, manufacturing and service, from 2006–2013 using a tailored firm-level database. Our results highlight the role of skills and sectors in capital productivity change, while technological change is the main driver. Next, skills and technology improvement together can only explain capital productivity growth. Finally, our approach allows having a new look at two related topics: the skilled-biased technological change (SBTC) and the capital-skill complementarity (CSC) hypotheses. We provide support for the first and partially for the second.