Computers as Stepping Stones? Technological Change and Equality of Labor Market Opportunities
研究1990年代德国计算机技术引入如何改善低教育背景工人进入技术采用职业的机会，并降低其工资惩罚，从而促进劳动力市场机会均等。
This paper analyzes whether technological change improves equality of labor market opportunities by increasing the returns to skills relative to the returns to parental background. We find that in Germany during the 1990s, the introduction of computer technologies improved the access to technology-adopting occupations for workers with low-educated parents and reduced their wage penalty within these occupations. We also show that this significantly contributed to a decline in the overall wage penalty experienced by workers from disadvantaged parental backgrounds over this time period. Competing mechanisms, such as skill-specific labor supply shocks and skill upgrading, do not explain these findings.