Skills and productivity | Research

One of the big challenges in fleshing out the underlying mechanisms of productivity is measuring how different skills come together to produce more, i.e. their complementarity. Typically, complementarity is approximated by looking at skill profiles that co-occur more often than expected. This research area takes a different (more direct) approach by proposing models that are explicit about the relationship between skills firm technology. At the moment, you can read my work with Zachary Kessler on how we estimate the wage fraction that is due to complementarities (as opposed to their individual contributions). This is an active work stream so more publications will be posted soon.

Estimating worker complementarity with an endogenous technology model

Published on: 2024

In economics, skill sorting is the process through which human capital finds its way to where it is demanded. Studies on this topic usually skip the sorting process and focus on an ideal equilibrium outcome. This paper develops a new theory of skills and how they endogenously shape the technology of firms. We formalise this theory in a computational model that allow us to estimate new measures of productivity, for example, what we call the complementarity wage premium.