 From Tacit to Tangible: Wage Premium of Skills CertificationMagdalena Cornejo () and Darío Judzik () School of Government Working Papers from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella Abstract: This paper estimates wage returns to skills certification in Argentina’s construction sector using novel administrative microdata from the official occupational competence certification system. The dataset tracks 2,130 workers matched to 199 firms over the period 2022-2023, allowing us to exploit within-worker variation in certification status. Certification is associated with wage gains of approximately 10%. However, when worker–firm fixed effects are included, the estimated premium declines to 2–3%, indicating that a substantial share of the raw return reflects sorting across firms rather than within-firm wage progression. Our estimates are robust to alternative real wage deflators and to different controls for collective bargaining agreements. The findings provide new quantitative evidence on the labor market returns to skills certification in a labor-intensive sector. This evidence can inform development policy in middle-income countries seeking to strengthen labor market trajectories through formal skills recognition, increasing labor income, reducing information asymmetries, and enhancing worker mobility. Keywords: wages; certification; skills; competence; unions; bargaining. (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:udt:wpgobi:wp_gob_2026_14 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in School of Government Working Papers from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella |
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