Distant labour supply, skills and induced technical change

Abstract

To analyze the consequences of new technologies, which make it possible to employ distant labour, we model a developed country with high and medium-skilled labour interacting with an emerging market economy (EME) with medium and low-skilled labour. Expansion in labour supply induces medium-skill biased technical change, which raises the demand for such labour. As a result, inequalities tend to fall in the developed country, skill premiums rise marginally in the EME, but equality rises because labour employed in the low-skilled sector shrinks. Inequality falls across the countries since average wages, information and access rise in the EME.