فن آوری های نوین و تقاضا برای نیروی کار تحصیلکرده: تجربه تولید ژاپنی ها در دوران رشد با سرعت بالا

Focusing on the 1960s, we examine the relation between new technology and educational skills, and infer how much technological investments shifted labor demand among workers of different educational levels. First, we see that the highly educated graduates were absorbed into industries with high levels of new equipment. Next, we explain this educational bias by referring to individual cases. Lastly, we show that from 1963 to 1970, due to a rise in the new-capital ratio, demand growth for upper secondary school graduates and college graduates outpaced that for lower secondary school graduates by 1.0 and 1.2 percentage points per annum respectively. J. Japanese Int. Economies20 (1) (2006) 50–76.

In the midst of the postwar “economic miracle,” the Japanese economy achieved a transformation of its production technology. The application of growth accounting to a two-part period, from 1950 to the year of the collapse of the bubble economy (1992) with the first oil crisis (1973) as the mid point, reveals the following facts (Dornbusch et al., 1998, pp. 44–45). The average yearly per capita GDP growth was 8.01% in the period from 1950 to 1973, which was higher than the 2.42% growth of the United States for the same period. The contribution due to quantitative expansions in the workforce and capital constituted merely 1.37 of the 5.59 point difference. The remaining 4.22 points, that is, 75.5% of the difference, were due to total factor productivity growth. This contribution is particularly high when compared with the 52.1% contribution resulting from technological development in the period from 1973 to 1992. In the 1960s there were huge technological investments in many branches of manufacturing (Inoki, 1989, Kosai, 1986 and Yoshikawa, 1997, etc.), and by 1970 real private gross capital stock (installation basis) was four times that of 1960.1 But only when new capital is brought together with a suitably qualified workforce are potential levels of productivity achieved. If the pre-existing allocation of human resources is relied upon in implementing new technologies, then a large amount of time and costs have to be incurred in training. In fact, in the 1960s new production technologies pushed many firms to restructure their workforces. It is thought that the need for more “educational skills” (those skills acquired through school education) shifted labor demand from lower secondary school graduates to upper secondary school graduates and then also to college graduates.2 According to existing theories, the introduction of new technologies has the effect of skill-biased technological change (SBTC), shifting relative demand toward highly educated workers. The reason for such a bias is that in order to deal with the various problems resulting from the introduction of a new and unfamiliar production technology, along with scientific knowledge, logical reasoning and cognitive skills are required (Nelson and Phelps, 1966, Welch, 1970, Bartel and Lichtenberg, 1987 and Murnane and Levy, 1996, etc.). In this paper, we clarify the routes by which technological development led to an educational bias in labor demand, and we infer the degree to which technological development actually shifted relative demand in the 1960s. This paper is related to recent studies that examine the effects of computerization. It is well known that in the 1980s the level of wage inequality in the United States increased and economists have pursued various causes. Currently, the main suspect is SBTC brought about by the spread of IT (Information Technology). In a cross-sectional analysis, Autor et al. (1998) found that the point increase in the employment share of college graduates was significantly larger in industries where either computers were widely in use, or where the investment in computer-related equipment per employee was high.3 There are also studies that explore the actual circumstances of SBTC. Levy and Murnane (1996) examined changes in the work organization of a custodian unit in a bank. They found that simple tasks had been taken over by computers and that accountants had come to be in charge of complicated tasks such as detecting and correcting data errors, with responsibility for multiple funds. They point out that teaching employees the skills required to deal with these complex tasks was not worth its costs because of high turnover rates and changed skill demands. Bresnahan et al. (1999) conducted a questionnaire survey on changes to internal organization in workplaces. They argue that the IT revolution makes the decentralization of organizations possible and enables highly skilled technicians to carry out autonomic information analyses. They suggest that these factors exerted complementarities in producing output of high added-value. Lindbeck and Snower (2000) argue that the information revolution has enabled information gleaned from individual tasks to be exploited in complementary ways, resulting in a change from a Tayloristic style of division of labor to a holistic style, thereby creating new demand for employees who are capable of learning multiple skills in a short period of time. However, SBTC is not observed only in relation to IT. In the past, when new production processes were introduced, labor demand also shifted toward highly educated workers. According to Goldin and Katz (1998, Table III), in the electric power revolution of the first half of the 20th century, the more manufacturing industries came to rely on electricity purchased from power plants, and the more mechanized transportation and assembly operations became, the greater the observed share of highly educated (high school graduate) blue collar workers. Using data from 1960, 1970, and 1980, Bartel and Lichtenberg (1987) find that those industries with younger capital had a high relative demand for college graduate employees. Also, according to the aforementioned analysis of Autor, Katz, and Krueger, the within-industry demands in the US manufacturing had already shifted in favor of college graduates in the 1960s (Tables II and III). Furthermore, the correlation between the change in the share of college graduates and IT investment loses its significance when a general R & D variable is added (Table VII). These facts suggest that from at least the early 20th century, new technologies tend to be extensively complementary to educational skills.4 Since scientific knowledge is an ongoing necessity in the workplace even after a technology has been mastered, we argue that cognitive and problem-solving skills are especially required at the introductory stages. This paper proceeds as follows. The first half of the next section explains the conditions of the labor market in the 1960s and shows that while the workforce was rapidly upgraded from lower secondary school graduates to upper secondary school graduates, educational wage differentials remained remarkably stable. In the second half, we see that the highly educated among new graduates were disproportionately absorbed into industries with high levels of new equipment. In the third section, we clarify the routes by which new technologies led to a bias in workplaces. In the fourth section, by estimating share equations, we show that in the period from 1963 to 1970, due to the increase in the new-capital ratio (the ratio of new machines and equipment to tangible fixed assets), the rates of increase in demand for upper secondary school and college graduates outpaced that for lower secondary school graduates by 1.0 and 1.2 points per annum respectively. In the final section, we review our analysis and discuss remaining issues.