The Death of a Technical Skill
The Death of a Technical Skill John J. Horton Prasanna Tambe∗ MIT Sloan and NBER Wharton, U. Penn October 17, 2020 Abstract In 2010, Steve Jobs announced that Apple would no longer support Adobe Flash|a popular set of tools for creating Internet applications. After the announcement, the use of Flash declined precipitously. We show there was no reduction in Flash hourly wages because of a rapid supply response: Flash specialists, especially those who were younger, were less specialized, or had good \fall back" skills quickly transitioned away from Flash; new market entrants also avoided Flash, leaving the effective supply per Flash job opening unchanged. As such, there was no factor market reason for firms to stay with Flash longer. ∗For the latest version, see https://www.john-joseph-horton.com/papers/ schumpeter.pdf. We acknowledge valuable feedback from seminar participants at the NBER IT and Digitization Summer Institute, the INFORMS Conference on Information Systems and Technology, Cornell University, Arizona State University, the Rotterdam School of Management, the University of Texas-Austin, the University of Maryland, and the University of Utah. Thanks to James Bessen, Apostolos Filippas, Richard Zeckhauser, Chis Stanton, David Autor, Rob Seamans, Jacques Cr´emer,Adam Ozimek, Sebastian Steffen, Andrey Fradkin, Emma van Ingwen, Joe Golden, and Daniel Rock for helpful comments and suggestions. Prasanna Tambe is grateful for financial support from the Alfred P. Sloan foundation. John Horton is grateful for financial support from the Up- john Institute. Thanks to Jeff Bigham and Elliot Geno for insight into the labor market for Flash skills. For a version of this paper with all code included as an appendix, see https://www.john-joseph-horton.com/papers/schumpeter_with_code.pdf.
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