IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/qjecon/v106y1991i2p503-530..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Allocation of Talent: Implications for Growth

Author

Listed:
  • Kevin M. Murphy
  • Andrei Shleifer
  • Robert W. Vishny

Abstract

A country's most talented people typically organize production by others, so they can spread their ability advantage over a larger scale. When they start firms, they innovate and foster growth, but when they become rent seekers, they only redistribute wealth and reduce growth. Occupational choice depends on returns to ability and to scale in each sector, on market size, and on compensation contracts. In most countries, rent seeking rewards talent more than entrepreneurship does, leading to stagnation. Our evidence shows that countries with a higher proportion of engineering college majors grow faster; whereas countries with a higher proportion of law concentrators grow more slowly.

Suggested Citation

  • Kevin M. Murphy & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1991. "The Allocation of Talent: Implications for Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(2), pages 503-530.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:106:y:1991:i:2:p:503-530.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.2307/2937945
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

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

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Magee,Stephen P. & Brock,William A. & Young,Leslie, 1989. "Black Hole Tariffs and Endogenous Policy Theory," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521377003, September.
    2. Robert J. Barro, 1991. "Economic Growth in a Cross Section of Countries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(2), pages 407-443.
    3. Krueger, Anne O, 1974. "The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 64(3), pages 291-303, June.
    4. K. J. Arrow, 1971. "The Economic Implications of Learning by Doing," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: F. H. Hahn (ed.), Readings in the Theory of Growth, chapter 11, pages 131-149, Palgrave Macmillan.
    5. Robert E. Lucas Jr., 1978. "On the Size Distribution of Business Firms," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 9(2), pages 508-523, Autumn.
    6. Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1986. "Greenmail, White Knights, and Shareholders' Interest," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 17(3), pages 293-309, Autumn.
    7. Baumol, William J., 1996. "Entrepreneurship: Productive, unproductive, and destructive," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 3-22, January.
    8. Rosen, Sherwin, 1981. "The Economics of Superstars," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(5), pages 845-858, December.
    9. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1986. "Large Shareholders and Corporate Control," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(3), pages 461-488, June.
    10. Partch, M. Megan, 1987. "The creation of a class of limited voting common stock and shareholder wealth," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 313-339, June.
    11. Kuhn, Peter, 1988. "Unions in a General Equilibrium Model of Firm Formation," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 6(1), pages 62-82, January.
    12. Robert Summers & Alan Heston, 1988. "A New Set Of International Comparisons Of Real Product And Price Levels Estimates For 130 Countries, 1950–1985," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 34(1), pages 1-25, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stephan F. Gohmann & Bradley K. Hobbs & Myra J. McCrickard, 2016. "Productive versus unproductive entrepreneurship," Journal of Entrepreneurship and Public Policy, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 5(2), pages 145-160, August.
    2. Herrera-Echeverri, Hernán & Haar, Jerry & Estévez-Bretón, Juan Benavides, 2014. "Foreign direct investment, institutional quality, economic freedom and entrepreneurship in emerging markets," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(9), pages 1921-1932.
    3. Mo, Pak Hung, 2011. "Institutions, Entrepreneurship and Channels to Sustained Economic Growth," MPRA Paper 28911, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. van de Klundert, T.C.M.J. & Smulders, J.A., 1991. "Reconstructing growth theory : A survey," Other publications TiSEM 19355c51-17eb-4d5d-aa66-b, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    5. Robert E. Hall & Charles I. Jones, 1999. "Why do Some Countries Produce So Much More Output Per Worker than Others?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(1), pages 83-116.
    6. Henrekson, Magnus & Torstensson, Johan & Torstensson, Rasha, 1997. "Growth effects of European integration," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(8), pages 1537-1557, August.
    7. Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman, 1994. "Endogenous Innovation in the Theory of Growth," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 8(1), pages 23-44, Winter.
    8. Sylwia Zajączkowska-Jakimiak, 2006. "Wiedza techniczna i kapitał ludzki w teorii wzrostu gospodarczego," Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, issue 11-12, pages 47-69.
    9. Giuliano Guerra & Roberto Patuelli, 2016. "The Role of Job Satisfaction in Transitions into Self–Employment," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 40(3), pages 543-571, May.
    10. Bruno S. Frey, "undated". "Knight Fever towards an Economics of Awards," IEW - Working Papers 239, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    11. Jian, Jianhui & Fan, Xiaojie & Zhao, Shiyong & Zhou, Dong, 2021. "Business creation, innovation, and economic growth: Evidence from China’s economic transition, 1978–2017," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 371-378.
    12. Robert E. Hall & Charles I. Jones, "undated". "The Productivity of Nations," Working Papers 96012, Stanford University, Department of Economics.
    13. Ross Levine & Yona Rubinstein, 2017. "Smart and Illicit: Who Becomes an Entrepreneur and Do They Earn More?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(2), pages 963-1018.
    14. Argentino Pessoa & Mário Rui Silva, 2009. "Environment Based Innovation: Policy Questions," FEP Working Papers 308, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto.
    15. Morck, Randall & Deniz Yavuz, M. & Yeung, Bernard, 2011. "Banking system control, capital allocation, and economy performance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(2), pages 264-283, May.
    16. Levine, Ross & Renelt, David, 1991. "Cross-country studies of growth and policy : methodological, conceptual, and statistical problems," Policy Research Working Paper Series 608, The World Bank.
    17. Wei-Bin Zhang, 2015. "National Education and Global Economic Growth: A Synthesis of the Uzawa–Lucas Two-Sector and the Oniki–Uzawa Trade Models," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 6(4), pages 905-928, December.
    18. Ekaterina Ponomareva & Alexandra Bozhechkova & Alexandr Knobel, 2012. "Factors of Economic Growth," Published Papers 172, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, revised 2013.
    19. Federico Sturzenegger & Mariano Tommasi, 1992. ""Deadlock" Societies, The Allocation of Time and Growth Performance," UCLA Economics Working Papers 660, UCLA Department of Economics.
    20. Dani Rodrik, 1993. "Trade and Industrial Policy Reform in Developing Countries: A Review of Recent Theory and Evidence," NBER Working Papers 4417, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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:qjecon:v:106:y:1991:i:2:p:503-530.. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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/qje .

    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.