Firms and Skills: The Evolution of Worker Sorting

Christina Håkanson (), Erik Lindqvist and Jonas Vlachos
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Christina Håkanson: Sveriges Riksbank

No 1072, Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Abstract: We document a significant increase in the sorting of workers by cognitive and non-cognitive skills across Swedish firms between 1986 and 2008. The weight of the evidence suggests that the increase in sorting is due to stronger complementarities between worker skills and technology. In particular, a large fraction of the increase can be explained by the expansion of the ICT sector and a reallocation of engineers across firms. We also find evidence of increasing assortative matching, in the sense that workers who are particularly skilled in their respective educational groups are more likely to work in the same firms. Changes in sorting patterns and skill gradients can account for a about half of the increase in between-firm wage dispersion.

Keywords: Skill sorting; Skilled-biased technological change; Outsourcing; Globalization; Cognitive skills; Non-cognitive skills; Personality; Employer-employee matched data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J62 L21 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 81 pages
Date: 2015-06-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-hrm, nep-lma and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Firms and Skills: The Evolution of Worker Sorting (2021)
Working Paper: Firms and skills: the evolution of worker sorting (2015)
Working Paper: Firms and skills: the evolution of worker sorting (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1072

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