Matching skills of individuals and firms along the career path

Elisabeth Sattler-Bublitz

No 165, HWWI Research Papers from Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI)

Abstract: Research since Gary Becker equated specific human capital with firm-specific human capital. This paper divides firm human capital into a specific and a general component to investigate the relationships between firm- and occupation-specific human capital and job switches. Applying the task-based approach, the results show that the degree to which firm knowledge is portable depends on tasks similarities between the firms. In the case of switches, less experienced workers travel longer tasks distances between firms than more experienced workers. Firm- and occupation-specific knowledge are negatively related to wages in a new job but achieving a good occupational, instead of firm, match is most important for employees. The amount of specific knowledge on the firm level, called occupational intensity, decreases with experience and leads to higher wages for higher qualification levels. In addition, the positive effect of occupational intensity on wages can outweigh the negative consequences of covering long tasks distances.

Keywords: skill-weights; task-based approach; specific human capital; labor mobility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-lab and nep-sbm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/112726/1/83021030X.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Matching skills of individuals and firms along the career path (2018)
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:zbw:hwwirp:165

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in HWWI Research Papers from Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().