We study the impact on the skill premium of increases in the quality of goods consumed by households (“trading up”). Our empirical work shows that high-quality goods are more intensive in skilled labor than low-quality goods and that household spending on high-quality goods rises with income. We propose a model consistent with these facts. This model accounts for the past rise in the skill premium with more plausible rates of skill-biased technical change than those required by the canonical model. It also implies that an expansion of the skilled labor force reduces the skill premium by much less than in the canonical model.

中文翻译：

---

交易升级和技能溢价

我们研究了家庭消费的商品质量提高（“向上交易”）对技能溢价的影响。我们的实证研究表明，高品质商品比低品质商品更需要熟练劳动力，而且家庭在高品质商品上的支出随着收入的增加而增加。我们提出了一个与这些事实一致的模型。该模型解释了过去技能溢价的上升，其偏向技能的技术变化率比规范模型所要求的更高。这也意味着，与典型模型相比，熟练劳动力的扩张减少的技能溢价要少得多。