Labor Market Dynamics and Individual Learning Ability

Labor Market Dynamics and Individual Learning Ability
Author: Jongsuk Han
Publisher:
Total Pages: 117
Release: 2013
Genre: Employability
ISBN:

"My research focuses on how labor market dynamics are different across ability. In this dissertation, I explore the impact of individual ability on the cyclicality of employment rates over the business cycle and non-employment duration. Then I provide a human capital model with learning-by-doing and heterogeneous learning ability to explain the differences in observed labor market dynamics across ability. In chapter one, I discuss the Armed Forces Qualification Test as a measure of ability. Then, I provide some empirical evidence which shows that high ability workers are more attached to the labor market than low ability workers. Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 shows that high ability workers have higher employment rates, less pro-cyclical employment rates, and shorter non-employment duration than low ability workers. At the same time, workers with high ability have higher wage levels and wage growth rates than low ability workers. I suggest that a human capital model with learning-by-doing and heterogeneous learning ability can explain high labor supply from high ability workers, because current labor supply increases future human capital which delivers higher labor income in the future. In the second chapter, I empirically document that employment rates of high ability workers are less volatile than those of low ability workers over the business cycle. Less pro-cyclical employment rates for high ability workers remains even after controlling for education and average life-time wage. Moreover, the impact of ability on employment cyclicality decreases over the life cycle. In order to explain my empirical findings, I provide a life-cycle model with human capital accumulation through learning-by-doing. Heterogenous learning ability is introduced into the model to generate different wage profiles across ability. In this model, high ability workers can accumulate more human capital than low ability workers during any given period of employment. Therefore, high ability workers have more incentive to provide their labor than low ability workers because they can have higher return in the next period by accumulating more human capital. In the recession, all workers reduce their labor supply because the aggregate productivity falls. However, high ability workers decreases labor supply much less than low ability workers because working in the current period increases their future human capital. I calibrate the model to match employment and wage profiles over experience. Then, an aggregate productivity shock is introduced into the model to perform the business cycle analysis. The simulated data mimics the observed pattern in the data. In the last chapter, I explore the duration difference across ability groups instead of the incidence of employment. I find that high ability workers experience shorter non-employment duration than low ability worker even after conditioning on education and average life-time wage. I test whether the main reason of short non-employment duration for high ability workers is induced by low propensity to change their previous occupation, industry, or employer. Although workers who do not change occupation, industry, or employer have much shorter non-employment duration than workers who find new jobs in different sectors, the ability effect on non-employment duration is not generated by this sorting mechanism. Lastly, I build a human capital model with learning-by-doing and heterogeneous learning ability. Since high ability workers accumulate more human capital than low ability workers during the same employment period, high ability workers have a lower reservation wage conditional on current human capital stock. Hence, high ability workers are more likely to accept the wage offer than low ability workers after separation. I calibrate the model to match employment and wage profiles and average non-employment duration simultaneously. The calibrated model can qualitatively reproduce short non-employment duration for high ability workers"--Pages v-vii.

Labor Market Search, Informality, and On-the-Job Human Capital Accumulation

Labor Market Search, Informality, and On-the-Job Human Capital Accumulation
Author: Matteo Bobba
Publisher:
Total Pages: 65
Release: 2019
Genre:
ISBN:

We develop a search and matching model where firms and workers produce output that depends both on match-specific productivity and on worker-specific human capital. The human capital is accumulated while working but depreciates while searching for a job. Jobs can be formal or informal and firms post the formality status. The equilibrium is characterized by an endogenous steady state distribution of human capital and by an endogenous formality rate. The model is estimated on longitudinal labor market data for Mexico. Human capital accumulation on-the-job is responsible for more than half of the overall value of production and upgrades more quickly while working formally than informally. Policy experiments reveal that the dynamics of human capital accumulation magnifies the negative impact on productivity of the labor market institutions that give raise to informality.

Job Ladder, Human Capital, and the Cost of Job Loss

Job Ladder, Human Capital, and the Cost of Job Loss
Author: Richard Audoly
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022
Genre: Human capital
ISBN:

High-tenure workers who lose their jobs experience a large and prolonged fall in wages and earnings. The aim of this paper is to understand and quantify the forces behind this empirical regularity. We propose a structural model of the labor market with heterogeneous firms, on-the-job search and accumulation of specific and general human capital. Jobs are destroyed at an endogenous rate due to idiosyncratic productivity shocks and the skills of workers depreciate during periods of non-employment. The model is estimated on German Social Security data. By jointly matching moments related to workers' mobility and wages, the model can replicate the size and persistence of the losses in earnings and wages observed in the data. We find that the loss of a job with a more productive employer is the primary driver of the cumulative wage losses following displacement (about 50 percent), followed by the loss of firm-specific human capital (about 30 percent).

Wage Dispersion

Wage Dispersion
Author: Dale Mortensen
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2003
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780262633192

A theoretical and empirical examination of wage differentials findsthat traditional theories of competition do not explain why workers with identical skills are paid differently.

Life-Cycle Wage Growth and Heterogeneous Human Capital

Life-Cycle Wage Growth and Heterogeneous Human Capital
Author: Carl Sanders
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre:
ISBN:

Wages grow rapidly for young workers, and the human capital investment model is the classic framework to explain this growth. While estimation and the theory of human capital have traditionally focused on general human capital, both have evolved toward models of heterogeneous human capital. In this article, we review and evaluate the current state of this literature. We exposit the classic model of general human capital investment and extend it to show how a model of heterogeneous human capital can nest previous models. We then summarize the empirical literature on firm-specific human capital, industry- and occupation-specific human capital, and task-specific human capital and discuss how these concepts can explain a wide variety of labor market phenomena that traditional models cannot.