IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/nhheco/2012_016.html

Good Skills in Bad Times: Cyclical Skill Mismatch and the Long-term Effects of Graduating in a Recession

Author

Listed:
  • Liu, Kai

    (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration)

  • Salvanes, Kjell G.

    (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration)

  • Sørensen, Erik Ø.

    (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration)

Abstract

We show that cyclical skill mismatch, defined as mismatch between the skills supplied by college graduates and skills demanded by hiring industries, is an important mechanism behind persistent career loss from graduating in recessions. Using Norwegian data, we find a strong countercyclical pattern of skill mismatch among college graduates. Initial labor market conditions have a declining but persistent effect on the probability of mismatch early in their careers. We provide a simple model of industry mobility that is consistent with our empirical findings. The initially mismatched graduates are also more vulnerable to business cycle variations at the time of graduation.

Suggested Citation

  • Liu, Kai & Salvanes, Kjell G. & Sørensen, Erik Ø., 2012. "Good Skills in Bad Times: Cyclical Skill Mismatch and the Long-term Effects of Graduating in a Recession," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 16/2012, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:nhheco:2012_016
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nhh.no/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2fFiles%2fFiler%2finstitutter%2fsam%2fDiscussion+papers%2f2012%2f16.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:hhs:nhheco:2012_016. 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: Synne Stormoen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sonhhno.html .

    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.