Wenbo Zhu | 朱文博
Welcome to my website! I am an associate professor at the Research Institute for Global Value Chains (RIGVC), in the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE) in Beijing.
My primary research interest lies in the area of macroeconomics and labour economics.
Contact info|联系方式
The Research Institute for Global Value Chains (RIGVC)
University of International Business and Economics (UIBE)
419 Keyan Building, 10 Huixin Dongjie Road
Beijing China, 100029
北京市 朝阳区 惠新东街10号 对外经济贸易大学 逸夫科研楼419
E-mail: wenbo.zhu [AT] uibe.edu.cn
My CV in pdf
中文简历
Google Scholar Profile
Publication|论文发表
Hollowing Out and Slowing Growth: The Role of Process Innovations, Review of Economic Dynamics, Volume 45, July 2022, Pages 217-236.
I develop an endogenous growth model with skill acquisition, which can simultaneously account for labour market polarization and a slow down in labour productivity growth. When a new technology enters the economy, it requires implementation by high-skilled workers. Over time, process innovation makes the technology more user-friendly so that lower skilled workers can also operate it. Process innovation contributes to growth by increasing the range of technologies that a lower skilled worker can operate. It also reallocates labour demand for different skill-groups and thereby affects the income distribution. Skill can be acquired through a costly learning activity and workers face different learning costs. I calibrate the model to match the European labour market in 2000 and 2014 respectively. I show that when the rate of process innovation decreases, labour productivity growth slows down and wage and employment become polarized.
- [ code and data files ] [ citation ] [ 中文内容简介 ] [ working paper version ]
Selected Working papers|工作论文
Skill-Replacing Process Innovation and the Labour Market: Theory and Evidence, Canadian Journal of Economics, February 2023, accepted
I study the differential impacts of product innovation and process innovation on the labour market. Using European data from 2000 to 2018, I find that industries with proportionally more firms reporting product innovation than process innovation also tend to exhibit a lower income share of low-skilled workers. To better understand the mechanism, I develop a dynamic growth model in which firms conduct both types of innovation endogenously. In the model, product innovation introduces new intermediate goods, which tend to require high-skilled workers to implement. Process innovation simplifies existing production technologies and thereby allows firms to replace high-skilled workers with low-skilled ones. The model demonstrates a bi-directional relationship between the labour market and the two types of innovations. I extend the model to incorporate two industries and allow low-skilled workers to switch industry freely. I calibrate the extended model to the largest two industries in UK in 2014 and 2018 respectively. I find that product innovation has become less costly but increasingly demanding in skills, and the cost of process innovation has increased on average and becomes more diverse across firms.
Policy related writings|政策研究报告
- "Heterogeneous Technological Changes and Their Impacts on Income Inequality
and Productivity Growth" (Adapted from my PhD thesis)
- Prepared as a background paper for the report: Global Value Chain Development Report 2019: Technological Innovation, Supply Chain Trade and Workers in a Globalized World (cited in Chapter 2)
- The report is co-published by The World Bank Group, The World Trade Organization (WTO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE-JETRO) and the Research Center of Global Value Chains of the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE). It is the second in the series Global Value Chain Development Report, the first published in 2017.
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