Labor market pooling and human capital investment decisions

Elke Amend and Patrick Herbst

No 200804, IAB-Discussion Paper from Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany]

Abstract: "Of the typically cited agglomeration advantages labor market pooling receives strong empirical support - yet remains under-explored theoretically. This paper presents a model of human capital formation in an imperfectly competitive, pooled local labor market with heterogeneous workers and firms. Firms produce for a competitive output market with differing technologies, thus requiring diverse skills. In anticipation of firm behavior, workers choose between specializing into specific skills and accumulating general human capital. While labor market pooling provides static efficiency gains, our approach also suggests that there are long-term effects: under a diversified industrial structure, industry-specific shocks lead to a labor market pooling advantage which raises the incentive for workers to acquire both general and specific human capital. This will not only strengthen a region's capability to adapt to change but will also contribute to higher growth." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Keywords: Ballungsraum; Beschäftigungseffekte; Bildungsinvestitionen; Bildungsökonomie; Fachkenntnisse; Humankapital; Allgemeinbildung; matching; Qualifikationsstruktur; Region; regionaler Arbeitsmarkt; Regionalökonomie; Regionalverflechtung; Arbeitslosigkeit; Arbeitsmarktstruktur (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 J24 J41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm, nep-lab and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doku.iab.de/discussionpapers/2008/dp0408.pdf

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iab:iabdpa:200804

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IAB-Discussion Paper from Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany] Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by IAB, Geschäftsbereich Wissenschaftliche Fachinformation und Bibliothek (iab.wib@iab.de).