The innovation premium to soft skills in low-skilled occupations

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

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

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)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2019-12-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-hrm, nep-ino, nep-ltv, nep-sbm, nep-tid and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/103452/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

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 occupations (2019)
Working Paper: The innovation premium to soft skills in low-skilled occuptions (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:103452

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