Social Preferences and Skill Segregation

Antonio Cabrales () and Antoni Calvó

Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Abstract: This paper shows that models where preferences of individuals depend not only on their allocations, but also on the well-being of other persons, can produce both large and testable effects. We study the allocation of workers with heterogeneous productivities to firms. We show that even small deviations from purely “selfish” preferences leads to widespread workplace skill segregation. That is, workers of different abilities tend to work in di¤erent firms, as long as they care somewhat more about the utilities of workers who are “close”.

Keywords: Contract theory; mechanism design; envy; social preferences; skill segregation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 C72 D64 D80 J41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: Written 2002-07
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