The Innovation Premium to Soft Skills in Low-Skilled Occupations

Philippe Aghion, Antonin Bergeaud, Richard Blundell () and Rachel Griffith

Working papers from Banque de France

Abstract: Matched employee-employer data from the UK are used to analyze the wage premium to working in an innovative firm. We find that firms that are more R&D intensive pay higher wages on average, and this is particularly true for workers in some low-skilled occupations. We propose a model in which a firm's innovativeness is reflected in the degree of complementarity between workers in low-skill and high-skilled occupations, and in which non-verifiable soft skills are an important determinant of the wages of workers in low-skilled occupations. The model yields additional predictions on training, tenure and outsourcing which we also find support for in data.

Keywords: : Innovation; Skill-biased Technological Change; Wage; Complementarity. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J31 L23 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 66 pages
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-hrm, nep-ltv, nep-sbm, nep-tid and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

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https://publications.banque-france.fr/sites/defaul ... /documents/wp739.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: The innovation premium to soft skills in low-skilled occupations (2019)
Working Paper: The innovation premium to soft skills in low-skilled occuptions (2019)
Working Paper: The innovation premium to soft skills in low-skilled occupations (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bfr:banfra:739

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