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Skill-relatedness and firm diversification

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  • Frank Neffke
  • Martin Svensson Henning

Abstract

According to the knowledge-based view of the firm, a firm’s workforce is its most important resource, and firms often diversify into activities that allow them to leverage human resources. Human capital also represents a main asset for employees. When switching jobs, individuals are expected to remain in industries that value the skills that they have developed in their previous work. Based on this observation, this article develops theoretical arguments and a statistical method that uses cross-industry labor flows to assess the skill-relatedness between industries. Industries classified in different sectors of the economy sometimes exhibit strong skill-relatedness linkages. Also, industry space, i.e., the resulting network that connects industries with overlapping skill requirements, is highly predictive of diversification moves on the part of firms. Diversification is found to be over 100 times more likely to occur into industries that have ties to a firm’s core activity in terms of skills than into industries that do not. This effect of skill-relatedness eclipses the effect of other types of relatedness, such as value chain linkages and classification-based relatedness.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Max Planck Institute of Economics, Evolutionary Economics Group in its series Papers on Economics and Evolution with number 2009-06.

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Date of creation: Jun 2009
Date of revision: Oct 2010
Handle: RePEc:esi:evopap:2009-06

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Keywords: diversification; relatedness; human capital; labor flows; skills Length 39 pages;

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References

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  1. Breschi, Stefano & Lissoni, Francesco & Malerba, Franco, 2003. "Knowledge-relatedness in firm technological diversification," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 69-87, January.
  2. Michael Gort, 1962. "Diversification and Integration in American Industry," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number gort62-1, October.
  3. C. A. Hidalgo & B. Klinger & A. -L. Barabasi & R. Hausmann, 2007. "The Product Space Conditions the Development of Nations," Papers 0708.2090, arXiv.org.
  4. Frank Neffke & Martin Svensson Henning, 2008. "Revealed Relatedness: Mapping Industry Space," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 0819, Utrecht University, Section of Economic Geography, revised Dec 2008.
  5. Koen Frenken & Frank Van Oort & Thijs Verburg, 2007. "Related Variety, Unrelated Variety and Regional Economic Growth," Regional Studies, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 41(5), pages 685-697.
  6. David Bryce & Sidney Winter, 2006. "A General Inter-Industry Relatedness Index," Working Papers 06-31, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
  7. Teece, David J. & Rumelt, Richard & Dosi, Giovanni & Winter, Sidney, 1994. "Understanding corporate coherence : Theory and evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 1-30, January.
  8. Dosi, Giovanni, 1988. "Sources, Procedures, and Microeconomic Effects of Innovation," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 26(3), pages 1120-71, September.
  9. Teece, David J., 1982. "Towards an economic theory of the multiproduct firm," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 3(1), pages 39-63, March.
  10. Montgomery, Cynthia A. & Hariharan, S., 1991. "Diversified expansion by large established firms," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 71-89, January.
  11. Ingram, Beth F. & Neumann, George R., 2006. "The returns to skill," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 35-59, February.
  12. Richard R. Nelson, 1995. "Recent Evolutionary Theorizing about Economic Change," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 33(1), pages 48-90, March.
  13. Maxim Poletaev & Chris Robinson, 2008. "Human Capital Specificity: Evidence from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and Displaced Worker Surveys, 1984-2000," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(3), pages 387-420, 07.
  14. Frank Neffke & Martin Svensson Henning & Ron Boschma, 2008. "Surviving in agglomerations: Plant evolution and the changing benefits of the local environment," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 0820, Utrecht University, Section of Economic Geography, revised Dec 2008.
  15. Maliranta, Mika & Nikulainen, Tuomo, 2008. "Labour Force Paths as Industry Linkages: A Perspective on Clusters and Industry Life Cycles," Discussion Papers 1168, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
  16. Rosenthal, Stuart S. & Strange, William C., 2004. "Evidence on the nature and sources of agglomeration economies," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: J. V. Henderson & J. F. Thisse (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 49, pages 2119-2171 Elsevier.
  17. Lemelin, Andre, 1982. "Relatedness in the Patterns of Interindustry Diversification," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 64(4), pages 646-57, November.
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Citations

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Cited by:
  1. Dario Diodato & Anet Weterings, 2012. "The Resilience of Dutch Regions to Economic Shocks. Measuring the relevance of interactions among firms and workers," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 1215, Utrecht University, Section of Economic Geography, revised Aug 2012.
  2. Karl-Johan Lundquist & Michaela Trippl, 2009. "Towards Cross-Border Innovation Spaces: A theoretical analysis and empirical comparison of the Öresund region and the Centrope area," SRE-Disc sre-disc-2009_05, Institute for the Environment and Regional Development, Department of Socioeconomics, Vienna University of Economics and Business.
  3. Bram Timmermans & Ron Boschma, 2012. "The effect of intra- and inter-regional labour mobility on plant performance in Denmark: the significance of related labour inflows," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 1213, Utrecht University, Section of Economic Geography, revised Jun 2012.
  4. Dauth, Wolfgang, 2010. "The mysteries of the trade: employment effects of urban interindustry spillovers," IAB Discussion Paper 201015, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
  5. Frank Neffke & Martin Henning, 2011. "Inter-industry linkages in local economies," ERSA conference papers ersa11p1075, European Regional Science Association.
  6. Karl-Johan Lundquist & Lars-Olof Olander, 2010. "Growth cycles: transformation and regional development," SRE-Disc sre-disc-2010_04, Institute for the Environment and Regional Development, Department of Socioeconomics, Vienna University of Economics and Business.

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