This paper studies how changes in the complexity of the firms' production technologies affect
wage differences between and within tasks. In a production process where tasks are
complementary, the employer may have an incentive to pay higher wages when using more
complex technologies because the output of such processes is more effort-sensitive. We use
linked employer-employee data from the Finnish metal industry. These data provide
quantified information on the complexity of the tasks of individual workers. The average
complexity of the tasks in the firm is used as a proxy for the complexity of the production
process. We estimate the effect of the complexity of the production process on hourly wages
at different levels of complexity of the worker's own tasks and at different parts of the
conditional wage distribution within tasks. We find that the complexity of the firm's production
process increases wages in all the tasks but that there are no significant differences in this
effect across tasks. Finally, the effect of the complexity of the production process tends to be
stronger at the high end of the conditional wage distribution within tasks.
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