Does Turnover Inhibit Specialization? Evidence from a Skill Survey in Peru

Andrea Atencio-De-Leon (), Munseob Lee and Claudia Macaluso ()
Additional contact information
Andrea Atencio-De-Leon: International Monetary Fund
Claudia Macaluso: Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond

No 16671, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We design, pilot, and field a new survey of occupational skills in Peru, to investigate human capital differences between poor and rich countries. Though the average skill level is comparable, Peruvian jobs have markedly more uniform skill profiles than jobs in the US. However, matching frictions are no more severe than in the US, and recruiting technology is largely equivalent as well. A model with complementarities in production offers a plausible explanation. Uncertainty about labor availability, more pronounced in poor countries' turbulent labor markets, destabilizes production. This generates an endogenous labor demand preference for unspecialized workers.

Keywords: cross-country productivity differences; human capital; labor reallocation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 O11 O47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2023-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
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Published - published in: American Economic Review: Insights, 2025, 7 (1), 56–70

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Working Paper: Does Turnover Inhibit Specialization? Evidence from a Skill Survey in Peru (2023)
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