The innovation premium to soft skills in low-skilled occupations

Philippe Aghion, Antonin Bergeaud, Richard Blundell () and Rachel Griffith

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: Matched employee-employer data from the UK are used to analyze the wage premium to working in an innovative firm. We find that firms that are more R&D intensive pay higher wages on average, and this is particularly true for workers in some low-skilled occupations. We propose a model in which a firm's innovativeness is reflected in the degree of complementarity between workers in low-skill and high-skilled occupations, and in which non-verifiable soft skills are an important determinant of the wages of workers in low-skilled occupations. The model yields additional predictions on training, tenure and outsourcing which we also find support for in data.

Keywords: innovation; skill-based technological change; wage; complementarity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J31 L23 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-12-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-hrm, nep-ino, nep-knm, nep-ltv and nep-sbm
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

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Related works:
Working Paper: The Innovation Premium to Soft Skills in Low-Skilled Occupations (2019)
Working Paper: The innovation premium to soft skills in low-skilled occuptions (2019)
Working Paper: The innovation premium to soft skills in low-skilled occupations (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1665

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