Labor Market Fluidity and Human Capital Accumulation / Niklas Engbom.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Engbom, Niklas.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w29698.

NBER working paper series no. w29698

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2022.

Summary:

Using panel data from 23 OECD countries, I document that wages grow more over the life-cycle in countries where job-to-job mobility is more common. A life-cycle theory of job shopping and accumulation of skills on the job highlights that a more fluid labor market allows workers to faster relocate to jobs where they can better use their skills, incentivizing accumulation of skills. Lower labor market fluidity reduces life-cycle wage growth by 20 percent and aggregate labor productivity by nine percent across the OECD relative to the US. I derive a set of testable predictions for training and confront them with comparable cross-country training data, finding support for the theory.

Notes:

Print version record

January 2022.