How General Is Human Capital? A Task-Based Approach

Christina Gathmann and Uta Schönberg ()
Additional contact information
Uta Schönberg: University College London
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Uta Schoenberg

No 3067, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper studies how portable skill accumulated in the labor market are. Using rich data on tasks performed in occupations, we propose the concept of task-specific human capital to measure the transferability of skills empirically. Our results on occupational mobility and wages show that labor market skills are more portable than previously considered. We find that individuals move to occupations with similar task requirements and that the distance of moves declines with time in the labor market. We also show that task-specific human capital is an important source of individual wage growth, in particular for university graduates. For them, at least 40 percent of overall wage growth over a ten year period can be attributed to task-specific human capital. For the low- and medium-skilled, task-specific human capital accounts for at least 35 and 25 percent of overall wage growth respectively.

Keywords: occupations; human capital; skill transferability; wage growth; Germany (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57 pages
Date: 2007-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-hrm and nep-lab
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (40)

Published - published in: Journal of Labor Economics, 2010, 28 (1), 1 - 49

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp3067.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: How General Is Human Capital? A Task-Based Approach (2010)
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:iza:izadps:dp3067

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().