Our paper seeks to gain insights into the effect of labour market institutions on the dynamics of the labour market during the diffusion process of new technologies. We develop an endogenous job destruction matching framework, with heterogeneous workers, where the segmentation of the labour market between workers having the required ability to do a technological job and the rest of the workers is endogenous. The dynamics of this segmentation may follow a monotonous decreasing path or a non-monotonous U‐shaped path depending on the unemployment benefit system. If benefits are generous, we are in the U‐shaped case.

Using individual data from the French Labour Force Survey and the Complementary Survey on Working Conditions for 1998, we analyse earnings inequalities along the wage distribution between workers using novel Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) at their job and those not using them. We estimate quantile regressions with technological dummies and carry out a decomposition analysis, both at the aggregate level and by occupations. At the aggregate level, most of the wage gap between both populations is explained by the divergence in their labour characteristics. In jobs where ICT are not very diffused, the technological premium is larger than in jobs characterized by a large presence of novel technologies. Whereas in the former type of jobs, the technological premium is mainly justified by a divergence in the labour market characteristics between ICT users and nonusers, in positions characterized by a wide presence of novel technologies the technological premium responds rather to a divergence in the returns to identical characteristics.

This paper seeks to provide a theoretical explanation to the contradictory results found by the empirical literature concerning the effects of recent workplace organizational changes on job stability. We develop an endogenous job destruction model à la Mortensen-Pissarides (1994) where a modernizing firm may offer to the worker a tayloristic job (traditional organization) or a holistic job (modern organization). We then study the evolution of job stability during the transition from a tayloristic to a holistic organization. Our results point towards the importance of the restructuring costs supported by firms during the modernizing trajectory as the main factor responsible for the variations in job stability. Copyright 2007 The Author; Journal compilation 2007 CEIS, Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini and Blackwell Publishing Ltd..

We construct an intertemporal general equilibrium model with two types of jobs and two types of workers. We allow for job competition between high- and low-skilled segment of the labour market and for on-the-job search. Matching processes are represented by matching functions à la Pissarides. Workers search intensities are endogenous. Biased technological change is introduced via embodied technical progress and a capital-skill complementarity. The model is calibrated and simulated to evaluate the impact of various types of shocks. The model reproduces quite well the unemployment rate changes and the relative wage stability observed over the last two decades. It suggests strong interactions between biased technological change, discouragement effects and job competition. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)