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14.49

Information Technology and the Labor Market

Undergraduate · Historical course

Spring 2005

Topics

  • Setting the Stage - Incomes, Occupations and Wages
  • Two Early Views of Computers’ Impacts
  • Does Technology Complement “Skill”?
  • Cognition I - Perceiving What Task is to be Done
  • IT and Tasks I: Rules Based Applications Including Expert Systems
  • IT and Tasks II: Pattern Recognition and Computer Learning
  • Implementing Computers and the Reorganization of Work
  • Implementing Computers and the Reorganization of Work (cont.)
  • Cognition II - What People Get Paid For: Expert Thinking and Complex Communication
  • IT and Markets
  • IT and Outsourcing
  • IT and Productivity
  • Wrap-up

Readings

  • ses #: 1 · topics: Setting the Stage - Incomes, Occupations and Wages · readings: Levy, Frank. “Industrial Change: Is There Life After the Service Sector?” and “Occupational Change: Can the Economy Still Produce Good Jobs, and, If So, Who Gets Them?” Chapters 4 and 5 respectively in The New Dollars and Dreams . New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 1998. ISBN: 0871545152.
    Reading assignment
  • Krueger, Alan B. “How Computers have Changed the Wage Structure: Evidence from Microdata, 1984-1989.” Quarterly Journal of Economics (February 1993): 33-60.
    Listed reading
  • Simon, Herbert. “The Corporation: Will it be Managed by Machines?” In Management and the Corporations . Edited by M. L. Anshen, and G. L. Bach. New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 1960, pp. 17-55. ISBN: 0837180511.
    Listed reading
  • Attewell, Paul. “What is Skill?” Work and Occupations 17 (1990): 422-448.
    Listed reading
  • Beamish, Anne, Frank Levy, and Richard J. Murnane. “Information Technology and Skill Requirements: Examples from a Car Dealership.” In Die Zukunft computergestuetzter Kfz-Diagnose. Edited by Felix Rauner, Norbert Schreier, and Georg Spoettl. Bielefeld, Germany: W. Bertelsmann Verlag, 2002. ISBN: 3763930221.
    Listed reading
  • Card, David, and John DiNardo. “Skill Biased Technological Change and Rising Wage Inequality: Some Problems and Puzzles.” Journal of Labor Economics 20, no. 4 (2002): 733-744, bottom of 746-761.
    Listed reading
  • Anderson, John R. “Perception,” Chapter 2, and “Conceptual Knowledge.” In Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications . New York, NY: W. H. Freeman, 1995, pp. 36-73, 151-168. ISBN: 0716723859.
    Listed reading
  • Quinn, Paul C. “Category Representation in Young Infants.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 11, no. 2 (April 2002): 66-70.
    Listed reading
  • Davis, Randall. “Knowledge Based Systems.” Science Magazine (February 28, 1968): 957-963.
    Listed reading
  • Listed reading
  • Mae, Fannie. “Understanding Desktop Underwriter.” Research Department of the Federal National Mortgage Association. January 14, 2000. (Memo.)
    Listed reading
  • Bowen, Kenneth A. “Rules-Based Management of Options Trading.” PC-AI (January/February 2000): 16-20.
    Listed reading
  • Duda, Richard O., Peter E. Hart, and David G. Stork. Pattern Classification . 2nd ed. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons, 2001, chapter 1. ISBN: 0471056693.
    Listed reading
  • Quinn, Paul C., and M. H. Johnson. “The emergence of perceptional category representations in young infants: a connectionist analysis.” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 66 (1997): 236-63.
    Listed reading
  • Blois, Marsden S. “Clinical Judgment and Computers.” New England Journal of Medicine 303 (July 24, 1980): 192-197.
    Listed reading
  • Grimson, W. E. L., and J. L. Mundy. “Applications of Computer Vision.” Communications of the ACM 37, no. 3 (1994): 45-51. (Special Issue on “Commerical and Industrial AI.”)
    Listed reading
  • Freeman, William T., et al. “Computer Vision for Interactive Graphics.” IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 18, no. 3 (May-June 1998): 42-53.
    Listed reading
  • Autor, David, Frank Levy, and Richard J. Murnane. “Upstairs, Downstairs: Computers and Skills on Two Floors of a Large Bank.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review (April 2002).
    Listed reading
  • Goren, Allen L., et al. “Automated Natural Spoken Dialog.” IEEE Computer Magazine 5, no. 4 (April 2002): 51-56.
    Listed reading
  • ses #: 15 · topics: Implementing Computers and the Reorganization of Work · readings: Bartel, Ann, Casey Ichniowski, and Kathryn Shaw. “The Strategic Investment in Information Technologies and New Human Resource Practices and Their Effects on Productivity: An ‘Insider’ Econometric Analysis.” Columbia University, October 21, 2004. (Mimeo.)
    Reading assignment
  • Bransford, John, Ann Brown, and Rodney Cocking, eds. “How Experts Differ from Novices.” Chapter 2 in How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School . Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2000. ISBN: 0309070368.
    Listed reading
  • LeDoux, Joseph. “A Few Degrees of Separation.” In The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life . New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1996. ISBN: 0684836599.
    Listed reading
  • Murray, Nick. “Planning for the Five Great Goals of Life.” Chapter 8 in The Excellent Investment Advisor . Mattituck, NY: The Nick Murray Company, Inc., 1996. ISBN: 0965516105.
    Listed reading
  • Norrestradners, Tor. “The Tree of Talking.” Chapter 5 in The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size . New York, NY: Viking Press, 1998. ISBN: 0140230122.
    Listed reading
  • Valley, Kathleen, Leigh Thompson, Robert Gibbons, and Max H. Bazerman. “How Communication Improves Efficiency in Bargaining Games.” Games and Economic Behavior 38 (2002): 127-55.
    Listed reading
  • Goolsbee, Austin, and Judith Chevalier. “Measuring Prices and Price Competition On Line: Amazon and Barnes and Noble.” NBER Working Paper No. 9085, July 2002.
    Listed reading
  • Mendelson, Haim. “Dell Direct.” Teaching Case EC-17. Stanford University Business School Center for Electronic Business and Commerce. November 2000.
    Listed reading
  • Ellison, Glenn, and Sara Fisher Ellison. “Search, Obfuscation, and Price Elasticities on the Internet.” MIT Working Paper, January 2001.
    Listed reading
  • Hays, Constance. “What Wal-Mart Knows about Customer Habits,” New York Times , November 14, 2004.
    Listed reading
  • “A World of Work.” The Economist . November 11, 2004.
    Listed reading
  • Baily, Martin Neil, and Robert Z. Lawrence. “What Happened to the Great US Job Machine? The Role of Trade and Electronic Offshoring.” Brookings Papers in Economic Activity 2 (2004): Section 4.
    Listed reading
  • Listed reading
  • Roschelle, Jeremy, et al. “Changing How and What Children Learn in School with Computer Based Technologies.” Children and Computer Technology 10, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2000): 76-101.
    Listed reading
  • Levy, Frank, and Richard J. Murnane. “Computers and the Teaching of Skills.” Chapter 7 in The New Division of Labor . New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004. ISBN: 0691119724.
    Listed reading
  • Stiroh, Kevin J. “Information Technology and the U.S. Productivity Revival: What Do the Industry Data Say?” American Economic Review (December 2002).
    Listed reading
  • Listed reading
Sources