Thesis advisor: Juliet B. Schor / In this dissertation, I argue that questioning the relationship between technological change, specifically the new types of markets and practices enabled by the “sharing economy” and inequality has become an urgent need. While the sector promotes itself as the harbinger of egalitarian access to economic opportunity and consumption, independent studies of its operations and impacts point towards significant discriminatory dynamics favoring the already privileged. As the sector keeps growing, understanding its impact on inequality becomes ever more critical. I focus on one sharing economy platform, Airbnb, which facilitates the practice of “home-sharing,” or more accurately short-term rentals. I investigate the relationship between Airbnb and inequality in three papers that focus on how the deeply unequal urban settings where much of the economic activity on Airbnb takes place operate within the context of economic activity enabled by the platform. The analysis for all three papers is based on the data for more than 450,000 Airbnb listings and the demographic and economic characteristics of the neighborhoods they are located in. In the first paper, I look at how race determines the patterns of participation and outcomes for people who rent out their properties. I show that the economic opportunities generated by the platform are unequally distributed across the urban landscape. There are fewer listings in areas with higher concentrations of non-White residents, the listings that are located in these areas charge lower prices, and have lower earnings. The second paper investigates the relationship between the public reputation system on Airbnb and racial discrimination. I show that characterizing the reputation system as a racially neutral tool, which has the potential to reduce discriminatory outcomes, is highly problematic. Airbnb listings located in neighborhoods with higher percentages of non-White residents have a harder time generating reputation information when they first come on the platform and tend to have systematically lower ratings. The third paper focuses on how short-term rentals generates new dynamics of gentrification in cities, by providing evidence for a new type of “rent gap” between long-term and short-term rentals, and how property owners are exploiting it. I argue that short-term rentals, in the absence of further effective regulation from governments, are likely to drive increasing levels of gentrification as they remain highly profitable and occupy an increasing number of housing units. I believe that studying these aspects of the sharing economy contributes to a fuller understanding of technological change and its understudied interaction with inequality. Moving beyond the mostly theoretical and aggregated understanding of change inherent in the SBTC literature, my research promotes a more concrete and empirical engagement with change in line with some of the research on the “digital divide,” and the emergent literature on inequality on online platforms. Ultimately, I think such an engagement can serve as the basis for a broader theoretical reckoning with the increased pace of technological change as more and more of our social life is “disrupted” by technological interventions, with significant consequences. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

The essay consists of three chapters. In chapter 1, I find that wages in U.S. regions have been diverging instead of converging from 1975 onward. This coincides with the period of accelerating skill-biased technological change. A decomposition of the divergence rate indicates three channels underlying the divergence: (1) an ever-widening wage gap between college graduates and high school graduates, (2) an increasing within-education group wage differential across regions, and (3) a concentration of skill composition across local labor markets. I then developed an endogenous skill-biased technology adoption model in which firms invest capital more intensively in regions with higher employment share of college graduates, explaining these three channels jointly. Finally I quantitatively assess the model by separately calibrating the regional aggregate production function; the results show that the relative skilled-labor efficiency has been persistently higher in skill-abundant regions, nevertheless the countrywide skill-biased technological change, is the main force making divergence happening. Chapter 2 studies energy-saving technological change in U.S. manufacturing sector, whose intensive margin and extensive margins are identified. I find that energy and capital are mostly complementary to each other, while labor is substitutive to energy-capital composite. However, a Cobb-Douglas nesting of labor is rejected. Quantitative exercise shows that in the post-crisis period, within in industry energy-saving technological change accounts for the largest proportion of the aggregate sectoral energy efficiency promotion in the long run. In contrast, in the short run, factor adjustment combined with sectoral shift accounts for the largest proportion of energy intensity reduction. Lastly, I provide evidence that structural change has taken place around the oil crisis in 1970s, which is consistent with the existing literature. In chapter 3, I documented the increasing dispersion of skill composition across different areas in the U.S. Meanwhile, the U.S. Housing Market has experienced a dramatic increase in the housing price, as well as a similarly increase in its dispersion across metropolitan areas. A set of related stylized facts are documented in this paper. First, the real wage goes similarly as real housing prices, but quantitatively different. Second, the rents and housing prices have not been going in the exactly same way, in terms of first two moments. Third, we find that local income inequality is positively correlated to the local housing price level. Based on these observations, we build a model where a dispersed skill-biased technology change can account for all the phenomena at the same time. / Ph. D.

This paper aims to explain how new technology impacts the labor market and to what extent it substitutes for labor. In addition, the relationship between new technology and income distribution will be examined. The analysis is based on an extensive literature survey and an empirical analysis covering 10 OECD countries over an eight year period. Advanced economies were chosen because according to recent research, they are likely to be most affected by rapid technological development. By implementing panel data and a fixed effect estimation technique, it is shown that ICT-investments are positively correlated with unemployment while no effect was found with regard to inequality.

Income inequalities have become a matter of major concern following reports that the working class and lower middle class of developed economies have income levels that are falling behind. Few studies have been conducted on the regional level even though this perspective might better capture the development of income inequalities, since national averages might hide local differences. This study uses panel data for 286 Swedish municipalities in between 1991-2017 and fixed effect regressions, to examine if the theory of a skill-biased technological change could be used to explain resent developments. We find an labor income divergence for Swedish municipalities within the studied time period. The share of high skilled workers is found to be a good predictor of the growth in regional labor income inequalities, while an ageing population of the regions falling behind counteracts the growth of inequality, possibly leading to an underestimation of the size of regional labor income divergence. These results are in support of a skill-biased technological change at work and a job polarization transforming regional labor markets and regional societies. We conclude that adopting a regional perspective in the analysis and development of future economic growth policies is necessary to ensure long term economic growth, equality of opportunity and social cohesion.

In the summer of 1940 around five thousand aircraft clashed during several months for control of the skies over Britain. The fighter aircraft used by the German Luftwaffe and British Royal Air Force were, for the most part, very similar. They were monoplane airframes made with a metal structure and covered with fabric or metal skin, their engines produced around 1,000 h.p., and the aircraft themselves achieved speeds of around 350 to 370 m.p.h. They had retractable undercarriages and were bristling with armaments. These aircraft stood in stark contrast to those used just over twenty years earlier in the First World War. Those machines were biplanes, almost exclusively made from wood, covered in a doped fabric, their engines produced around 400 h.p., with speeds at around 120 m.p.h., they had fixed undercarriages, one or two machine guns and were largely un-armoured. In a little over twenty years the basic form of fighter aircraft had changed, and the materials used in their construction had changed. The engines, guns, interior structure and even the operational roles to which they were assigned had been altered to greater or lesser extents. The period 1918-1939 was, therefore, very important in the development of British fighter aircraft, as it was in aviation technology more generally. The inter-war period suggested itself for several reasons. Firstly, the historiography upon which part of this thesis is hinged deals largely with its latter years and the years leading to World War Two. Due to this concentration on the mid-late 1930s, there is no real sense of what was going on in the 1920s, or attempts to understand the changes that the technology, and the institutions behind them, went through over the years. Secondly, following the First World War, the British aircraft industry was possessed of some considerable degree of competence and experience. To study the development of aviation technology before the war would be to catalogue the efforts of a number of pioneers each doing their own thing and following their own beliefs. To look at such development during the First World War would be to look at what happens when money is no serious object to research and development, production space, labour, management and so on. In looking at the inter-war years, we can examine a new industry that has just come out of a very considerable baptism of fire (in the case of Britain this baptism came just five years after her first successful flight was conducted). We can examine an industry that had to deal with enormous cutbacks, governmental micromanagement and lacking, for a long time, a fertile market in which to operate. Furthermore, the twenty years of the inter-war period allows us to look at a protracted period of technological change enabling us to account for the many varied and changing factors influencing the development of British fighter aircraft. Finally, the approach of the Second World War, the danger of Adolf Hitler and National Socialism and the proliferation of the Luftwaffe was not lost on policymakers and so this period also allows us to examine the effects of wider international events on technology. As it will be shown in the section dealing with historiography there has been plenty of work examining the British aircraft industry, individual aircraft and even the technologies which appeared over the twenty years that this thesis covers. However, there has been a great scarcity of work attempting to explain how such technologies appeared, how they linked together and how aircraft technology changed over the period. These are important questions, not only in terms of providing comprehensive explanations for their creation, development and existence but also in providing crucial context when attempting to pass judgement (as many historians have done) on the industry and the technology it created, and the politics and bureaucracy involved in shaping the technology. Using the example of British fighter aircraft during the 1920s and 1930s, this thesis will look at how the pace of technological change was set. How and why did British fighter aircraft develop the way they did and at the pace that they did? In particular, it will address the central issue of how the shift from the wooden biplanetype fighter of 1918 to the metal monoplane-type of 1939 came about. And can this change be conceptualised as a ‘paradigm shift’ from one ‘technological paradigm’ to another? This is particularly interesting because many consider that aviation now needs to carry out another paradigm shift, due to concerns about environmental impacts, especially as regards climate change.

En prenant pour point de départ l'émergence de technologies nouvelles, ce travail s'interroge sur la capacité des acteurs d'une industrie à réorganiser leurs bases de connaissances. Dans ce but, nous nous intéressons aux processus d'intégration des connaissances que nous définissons comme la recherche de complémentarité technologique dans les bases de connaissances des acteurs engagées dans des processus d'innovation. Dans un environnement technologique donné, larecherches de complémentarité technologique définit la recherche des combinaisons technologiques les plus productives. Deux angles de recherche sont ainsi privilégiés : les processus d'intégration intra-organisationnelle des connaissances et les processus d'intégration inter-organisationnelle des connaissances. Appliqué à l'étude des biotechnologies et de l'industrie pharmaceutique, ce travail de nature économétrique mobilisant des bases de données innovations, brevets et alliancesnous permet d'avancer deux principaux résultats. Dans le cadre des processus d'intégration intra-organisationnelle des connaissances, nous montrons que la recherche de complémentarité technologique est déterminée par la détention de connaissances fondamentales qui favorise la capacité des firmes à combiner leurs savoirs et par conséquent leur capacité à innover. Dans le cadre des processus d'intégration inter-organisationnelle des connaissances, nous montrons que la recherche de complémentarité technologique détermine le choix pour les acteurs d'une industrie de former une alliance stratégique et que cette recherche de complémentarité technologique évolue tout au long du cycle de vie de la technologie / Based on the emergence of a new technology as a starting point, this thesis deals with the capacity of industrial actors to reorganise their knowledge bases. In that purpose, we study knowledge integration processes dened as the search for technological complementarity in the knowlegde bases of actors engaged in innovation activities. In a given technological environment, the search for technological complementarity signifies the search for the most productive technological combinations. Our analysis is based on two dimensions: the intra-organisational knowledge integration processes and the inter-organisational knowledge integration processes. Applied to the case of the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry, the econometric research - based on innovations, patents and alliances databases - conducted in this thesis allows us to draw two main results. Regarding the intra-organisational knowledge integration processes, we emphasize that the search for technological complementarity is determined by the stock offundamental knowledge that promotes the firrm's capacity to combine knowledge and hence, its capacity to innovate. Regarding the inter-organisational knowledge integration processes, we show that the search for technological complementarity determines the choice given to actors of one industry to form a strategic alliance, and that this search for technological complementarity evolves throughout the technological life cycle.

We examine how speed of automation is affected by different employment protection regimes - one with lenient and one with stringent regulation. To assess we examine how occupations shares in the UK, US, Germany and Spain has changed from 1991-2013. According to our estimates, we find that the speed, of which high-risk occupations shrink over time, slows down in countries with a stringent EPL, Germany and Spain, regime relative to lenient EPL levels, the UK and US.

This dissertation contributes to theoretical and empirical studies in microeconomics, with a focus on evaluating policy relevant problems to provide new insights into questions. Within labor economics, I strive to understand the labor market returns to skills, taking into consideration the business cycle. In the first chapter, I investigate how the labor market returns to cognitive skills and social skills vary during recessions. In the second chapter, I examine the short-, medium and long-term career outcomes of college graduates as a function of economic conditions at graduation and both cognitive and social skills. In the third chapter, within information economics, I study how asymmetric information and demand uncertainty influence pricing strategies through learning. In Chapter 1, I examine how labor market returns to cognitive skills and social skills vary with the business cycle over the past 20 years, using data from the NLSY79 and the NLSY97. Exploiting a comparable set of cognitive and social skill measures across survey waves, I show that an increase in the unemployment rate led to higher demand for cognitive skills in the 2000s. High unemployment also sorted more workers into information use intensive occupations that require computer skills in the 2000s, but it sorted more workers into routine occupations in the 1980s and 1990s. This evidence suggests that recessions accelerate the restructuring of production toward routine-biased technologies. I also find that the returns to social skills increase during periods of high unemployment, though only in terms of the likelihood of full-time employment for experienced workers. Furthermore, an increase in unemployment increases the social skill task intensity of a worker's occupation in the 2000s, while it shows the contrary in the 1980s and 1990s. Based on these results, I argue that routine-biased technological change may not readily substitute for workers in tasks requiring interpersonal interaction, and therefore such technologies demand experienced laborers who have high social skills during recessions. In Chapter 2, I study the impacts of entry conditions on labor market outcomes to cognitive and social skills for the US college graduating classes of 1979–1989. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, I find that Workers with higher cognitive skills are more likely to be employed, find job more quickly and have higher-quality employment, while those with higher social skills voluntarily switch jobs more often. I also show that graduating in a worse economy intensifies the roles of social skills, allowing workers with higher social skills to catch up more quickly from poor initial conditions by switching jobs more often. This could partly explain why wage returns to cognitive skills declines but wage returns to social skills increases from graduating in recessions. In Chapter 3, we consider a dynamic pricing problem facing a seller who has private information about the quality of her good, but is uncertain about the arrival rate of buyers. Restricting attention to the equilibria in which the high-quality seller insists on a constant price, we show that the low-quality seller's expected payoff and equilibrium pricing strategy crucially depend on buyers' knowledge about the demand state. If they are also uncertain about the demand state, then demand uncertainty increases the low-quality seller's expected payoff, and her optimal pricing strategy is to offer a high price initially and drop it to a low price later. If buyers know the demand state, then demand uncertainty does not affect the low-quality seller's expected payoff, and a simple cutoff pricing strategy cannot be a part of equilibrium. In the latter case, we show that there exists an equilibrium in which the low-quality seller begins with a low price, switches up to a high price, and eventually reverts back to the low price.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the implications of additive manufacturing on industrial design profession and designers through an explorative study. Through a literature survey, implications of additive manufacturing technologies on industrial designers and industrial design profession were explored. Expanding literature survey with on-line searches, several experimental and commercial application examples of rapid manufacturing of products were identified. These identified examples were then used for a qualitative evaluation on the implications of additive manufacturing for the industrial design profession and designers through semi-structured interviews conducted with seven professional industrial designers having experience with rapid manufacturing in Istanbul Turkey. The research concluded with significant implications of additive manufacturing having the potential to cause paradigm shifts in industrial designer&rsquo / s role, definition of the profession and design process. The conclusions derived include suggestions to exploit the potential brought by these technologies and their applications.

Knowledge, learning, and innovation are vital elements in facilitating economic development and growth. Technological change, which is a synonym for generating knowledge, the diffusion thereof, and subsequent application in the marketplace in the form of novel products and processes, i.e. innovations, has a strong effect on the collective wealth of regions and nations. Knowledge spillovers, which are unintended knowledge flows that take place among spatial (geography) and sectoral (industry) units of observation, provide a rationale for diverging growth rates among spatial units, well beyond what might be explained by variations in jurisdictional factor endowments, and thus are of particular interest in this context. Measuring and quantifying the creation and diffusion of knowledge has proven to be a challenging endeavor. One way to capture technical and economically valuable knowledge is by means of patent and patent citation analysis. Following this approach, and utilizing a novel patent database that has been specifically developed for this purpose, the present dissertation investigates the spatio-sectoral patterns of knowledge spillovers in the Canadian economy over the time period 1983 to 2007. The employed research methodology addresses existing limitations in this stream of research, and contributes to the continuing debate regarding the significance of sectoral specialization versus diversity, and local versus non-local knowledge spillovers as the main driver of knowledge formation processes leading to innovation at the sub-regional scale. The findings indicate that knowledge spillovers are localized, and furthermore, that this localization effect has increased over time for both spillovers within a particular industry, as well as between industry sectors. The analysis of micro-geographic industry specific spatio-sectoral knowledge formation processes, and the inquiry into local sectoral knowledge spillover patterns, outlines how regional evolutionary technology trajectories potentially shape the rate and direction of technological change, and consequently influence economic growth, at a particular place.