Jacob Feord Sano

Contact

Email: jacobfs[at sign]akane.waseda.jp

Working Papers

• "An Anatomy of Skill-Biased Technical Change" - Jacob Sano and Dongya Koh
  

  Abstract: Skill-biased technical change has contributed to rising wage inequality, but the literature proxies skill through education, tasks, and occupations that obscure the margins along which technology operates. Unlike conventional skill proxies, we study what technology demands at the primitive skill level, identifying which components specific technologies augment or displace and providing the evidence that reskilling policy requires. This paper constructs four skill components from O*NET---socio-cognitive, management, STEM, and dexterity---using hierarchical clustering, and develops a framework showing that conventional measures of skill-biased technical change are weighted averages of shifts at the primitive skill level. Applying the framework to two plausibly exogenous technological episodes via a difference-in-differences design, we find that remote work adoption following COVID-19 raises returns to management skills while reducing those for STEM skills, whereas generative AI diffusion following the release of ChatGPT raises returns to socio-cognitive skills. Our findings suggest that effective reskilling policy requires targeting specific primitive skill components rather than broad education or task categories, as different technologies augment and displace fundamentally different skills.

• "Wage Penalties for Workplace Amenities: Evidence from remote work in the United States" - Jacob Sano
  View PDF

  Abstract: Following its popularization during the COVID-19 pandemic, work from home (WFH) has become a highly desired workplace amenity. In this paper, I present an empirical estimation of the wage penalty that workers in the US face for the ability to WFH using a nationally representative dataset. Estimation results show that a worker moving from infrequent WFH to frequent or full WFH is associated with an earnings reduction of approximately 2%. This penalty is smaller than existing estimates of workers' valuation of WFH, suggesting that workers may not yet be paying the full value they place on the amenity. In further analysis, I find that there is heterogeneity in the wage penalty across industries: industries with a higher share of WFH-compatible jobs-such as “information” and “finance and insurance”-tend to exhibit lower, or even nonexistent, penalties. Additionally, I present evidence that women raising children face a significantly steeper penalty for WFH than do other groups. This suggests possible limitations in using WFH as a tool for reducing the “child penalty” and narrowing the gender wage gap.

• "Policy Views in a Pandemic" - Jacob Sano, Reona Hayashi, So Morikawa, Nakata Taisuke, Thuy Linh Nguyen, Takeshi Ojima, and Manami Tsuruta
  

  Abstract: We examine how information provision affects the public's policy views on appropriate infection-control policies. We find that negative infection-related information increases support for stricter mobility restrictions, whereas negative economic or social information increases support for prioritizing economic and social activities. We find that these shifts in the policy view are driven by shifts in preferences over infection and socio-economic outcomes, not by shifts in perceptions of the tradeoff between these two competing outcomes.

Work in Progress

• "A Firm-Level Theory of Work From Home"
• "Optimal Lockdown Policy with Finite-Horizon Planning"

Upcoming Events

• July 15: OSIPP Lunch Seminar (Online, University of Osaka)
• August 21: SWET Quantitative Macroeconomics (Otaru University of Commerce)
• September 12-13: JEA Fall Conference (Daito Bunka University)

Advisor

My work is conducted under the guidance of Munechika Katayama.