Information Technology and the Labor Market

Spring 2002

Department of Economics, 14.49

Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 11.128/11.248

Syllabus | Assignments | Handouts

Course Summary

In this course, we will explore how information technology is reshaping the U.S. labor market: it's mix of occupations, the skills required to perform an occupation, the way work is organized, labor productivity, and wage levels and wage inequality.

We begin from the perspective the brain is a wonderful information-processing instrument, but when a computer and the brain perform a task in roughly the same way the computer can do it more cheaply. This fact leads to a pair of crosscutting market forces:

(1) Information technology is opening up many new opportunities through its complementarity with some human skills.

(2) Information technology is replacing human labor in certain tasks by substituting for other human skills.

We will explore the current limits on computers' ability to substitute for human skills, the human skills that computers complement, and the net effect of these forces on the labor market.

People

INSTRUCTOR: Frank Levy (Room 9-5531, phone 3-2089, flevy@mit.edu)

ASSISTANT: Holly Kosisky (Room 9-544, phone 3-7736, holly@media.mit.edu)

TEACHING ASSISTANT: Hoyt Bleakley (Room E52-351 phone x3-2675, hoyt@mit.edu)