The Value of Specific Skills under Shock: High Risks and High Returns

Christian Eggenberger, Simon Janssen and Uschi Backes-Gellner

No 158, Economics of Education Working Paper Series from University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW)

Abstract: We study the causal effects of negative and positive demand shocks on the returns to specific skills by using variation from international trade shocks. To measure specific skills, we use task information from an official data set for career guidance and merge this information with a large register data set. Our results show that negative demand shocks result in larger earnings losses for workers with specific skills than for those with general skills, but workers with specific skills also profit much more from positive demand shocks. Thus, demand shocks lead to risk-return trade-offs for workers with specific skills.

Keywords: demand shocks; human capital specificity; skill bundles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F16 I20 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 75 pages
Date: 2019-02, Revised 2022-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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http://repec.business.uzh.ch/RePEc/iso/leadinghouse/0158_lhwpaper.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The value of specific skills under shock: High risks and high returns (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iso:educat:0158

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