TY  - JOUR
AU  - MacDonald,Glenn
AU  - Weisbach,Michael
TI  - The Economics of Has-Beens
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 8464
PY  - 2001
Y2  - September 2001
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8464
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8464.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Glenn MacDonald
Olin School
Washington University of St. Louis
Campus Box 1133, One Brookings Drive
St. Louis, MO 63130
E-Mail: macdonald@wustl.edu

Michael Weisbach
Department of Finance
Fisher College of Business
Ohio State University
2100 Neil Ave.
Columbus, OH  43210
Tel: 614 292 3264
E-Mail: weisbach.2@osu.edu
AB  - Evolution of technology causes human capital to become obsolete. We study this phenomenon in an overlapping generations setting, assuming it is hard to predict how technology will evolve, and that older workers find updating uneconomic. Among our results is the proposition that (under certain conditions) a more rapid pace of technological advance is especially unfavorable to the old in the sense that the implied within-industry division of output or income between young and old becomes much more skewed, i.e., a smaller number of young earn comparatively more.  We apply our results to architecture, an occupation in which the has-beens phenomenon has had a particularly acute impact.
ER  -