In this paper, I construct product-level U.S.-manufacturing-imports data for new products. I show that consistent with product cycles, the North's new-products exports to the United States, relative to its old-products exports, grow faster than the South's for over a decade; then the South catches up with the North, and this pattern is reversed. This finding holds up in parametric, nonparametric, and semiparametric estimations, and only when new products are properly identified and old products within the same industries are used as controls. There is also evidence that product cycles become shorter over time and they are technology related.

This paper provides data on the output and factor payments of new goods for every four-digit industry in the U.S. manufacturing sector in the late 1970s and 1980s. For the entire manufacturing sector, the new goods' average skilled-labor intensity exceeds the old goods' by over 40%, and new goods can account for approximately 30% of the increase in the relative demand for skilled labor. Because new goods provide a direct measure of technology, this paper offers new evidence that technology has shifted demand in favor of skilled labor, consistent with the technology skill-complementarity hypothesis.

We employ Danish worker-firm data to study the effect of rising workload on health. Using both within-job-spell regression analyses and cohort event studies, we show that increases in firm sales lead workers to log longer hours and experience higher probabilities of stress, depression, heart disease, and strokes, with more pronounced effects for high-risk groups such as older workers, job-strained workers, and those with long initial work hours. We calculate that the average worker's ex ante welfare loss due to higher sickness rates accounts for nearly one-quarter of her earnings gains from rising firm sales.