Equilibrium Distribution of Labor Productivity

Hideaki Aoyama, Hiroshi Iyetomi and Hiroshi Yoshikawa

Discussion papers from Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI)

Abstract: We construct a theoretical model for equilibrium distribution of workers across sectors with different labor productivity, assuming that a sector can accommodate a limited number of workers which depends only on its productivity. A general formula for such distribution of productivity is obtained, using the detail-balance condition necessary for equilibrium in the Ehrenfest-Brillouin model. We also carry out an empirical analysis on the average number of workers in given productivity sectors on the basis of an exhaustive dataset in Japan. The theoretical formula succeeds in explaining the two distinctive observational facts in a unified way, that is, a Boltzmann distribution with negative temperature on the low-to-medium productivity side and a decreasing part in a power-law form on the high productivity side.

Pages: 12 pages
Date: 2012-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.rieti.go.jp/jp/publications/dp/12e041.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:eti:dpaper:12041

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion papers from Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by TANIMOTO, Toko (tanimoto-toko@rieti.go.jp).