IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jleorg/v31y2015i4p690-720..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Becker Meets Ricardo: Multisector Matching with Communication and Cognitive Skills

Author

Listed:
  • Robert J. McCann
  • Xianwen Shi
  • Aloysius Siow
  • Ronald Wolthoff

Abstract

This article presents a tractable framework for studying frictionless matching in education and labor markets when individuals have heterogeneous communication and cognitive skills. In the model, there are gains to specialization and team production, but specialization requires communication and coordination between team members. Individuals accumulate cognitive skills in schools when young. As adults, they decide whether to work as a manager or a worker in a firm or become a teacher in a school. Individuals with more communication skills will become either managers or teachers and earn higher wages. Each manager manages several workers and each teacher teaches several students, with their span of control being determined by their communication skill. These individuals also invest discretely more in education than marginally different individuals who become workers. Equilibrium is equivalent to the solution of an utilitarian social planner solving a linear programming problem.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert J. McCann & Xianwen Shi & Aloysius Siow & Ronald Wolthoff, 2015. "Becker Meets Ricardo: Multisector Matching with Communication and Cognitive Skills," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 31(4), pages 690-720.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:31:y:2015:i:4:p:690-720.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jleo/ewv002
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Arnaud Dupuy, 2021. "Migration in China: To work or to wed?," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(4), pages 393-415, June.
    2. Mak, Eric & Siow, Aloysius, 2017. "Occupational Choice and Matching in the Labor Market," IZA Discussion Papers 10584, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Stephen Hansen & Tejas Ramdas & Raffaella Sadun & Joe Fuller, 2021. "The Demand for Executive Skills," NBER Working Papers 28959, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Pian Shu, 2015. "Innovating in Science and Engineering or "Cashing In" on Wall Street? Evidence on Elite STEM Talent," Harvard Business School Working Papers 16-067, Harvard Business School, revised Nov 2016.
    5. David J. Deming, 2017. "The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(4), pages 1593-1640.
    6. Fumarco, Luca & Baert, Stijn, 2019. "Relative age effect on European adolescents’ social network," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 318-337.
    7. Joe Fuller & Stephen Hansen & Tejas Ramdas & Raffaella Sadun, 2021. "The demand for executive skills," POID Working Papers 015, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    8. Job Boerma & Aleh Tsyvinski & Alexander P. Zimin, 2021. "Sorting with Teams," Papers 2109.02730, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2023.
    9. Schultheiss, Tobias & Pfister, Curdin & Gnehm, Ann-Sophie & Backes-Gellner, Uschi, 2023. "Education expansion and high-skill job opportunities for workers: Does a rising tide lift all boats?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:31:y:2015:i:4:p:690-720.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jleo .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.