摘要：Garicano (2000) and Garicano and Rossi-Hansberg (2006) distin- guish comprehensive information technology advances between in- formation technology advances and communication technology ad- vances, both of which have qualitatively di erent characteristics. Based on this distinction, this paper shows that, rst, decreas- ing knowledge acquisition costs, due to advances in information technology, raise wage di erentials between problem solvers and production workers and within-group wage di erentials. Second, cheaper communication costs, due to communication technology advances, increase wage inequality between problem solvers and production workers and within-group wage inequality for problem solvers, but decrease within-group wage inequality for production workers. These heterogeneous impacts of information and com- munication technology advances on between-group wage inequal- ity and on within-group wage inequality would provide a rationale for a wage polarization pattern in the recent U.S. labor market in which there is an increasing wage inequality in the upper-tail of wage distribution and a decreasing wage inequality in the lower- tail of wage distribution.
关键词：Wage Inequality; Information Technology; Polariza-;tion
