Career Progression and Comparative Advantage

Shintaro Yamaguchi

Department of Economics Working Papers from McMaster University

Abstract: This paper constructs and structurally estimates a dynamic occupational choice model that has two distinct features. First, an occupation is vertically and horizontally differentiated by a multidimensional task complexity measure. This allows a simultaneous analysis of career progression and comparative advantage. Second, the model includes hundreds of occupations by characterizing all jobs by a multidimensional task complexity vector, thereby avoiding the curse of dimensionality. Estimation results from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY) indicate that wages increase according to task complexity and that individuals climb up the career ladder along the dimension of tasks in which they have a comparative advantage.

Keywords: Career decisions; dynamic stochastic discrete choice model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2008-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Career progression and comparative advantage (2010)
Working Paper: Career Progression and Comparative Advantage (2009)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mcm:deptwp:2008-03

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