Interpersonal Styles and Labor Market Outcomes

Lex Borghans, Bas ter Weel and Bruce A. Weinberg

No 1, Research Memoranda from Maastricht : ROA, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market

Abstract: This paper develops a framework to understand the role of interpersonal interactions in thelabor market including task assignment and wages. Effective interpersonal interactionsinvolve caring, to establish cooperation, and at the same time directness, to communicate inan unambiguous way. The ability to perform these tasks varies with personality and theimportance of these tasks varies across jobs. An assignment model shows that people are most productive in jobs that match their style and earn less when they have to shift to other jobs. An oversupply of one attribute relative to the other reduces wages for people who are better with the attribute in greater supply. We present evidence that youth sociability affects jobs assignment in adulthood. The returns to interpersonal interactions are consistent with the assignment model.

Keywords: education, training and the labour market (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
Date: 2007
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://edocs.ub.unimaas.nl/loader/file.asp?id=1218 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Interpersonal Styles and Labor Market Outcomes (2006)
Working Paper: Interpersonal Styles and Labor Market Outcomes (2006)
Working Paper: Interpersonal Styles and Labor Market Outcomes (2007)
Journal Article: Interpersonal Styles and Labor Market Outcomes (2008)
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dgr:umaror:2007001

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Research Memoranda from Maastricht : ROA, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market
Series data maintained by Willy Villevoye ().