Promotion, turnover, and discretionary human capital acquisition

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Scoones, D; Bernhardt, D
• 署名单位: University of Texas System; University of Texas Austin; University of Illinois System; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF LABOR ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0734-306X
• DOI: 10.1086/209884
• 发表日期: 1998
• 页码: 122-141
• 关键词: or-out contracts; mobility; INVESTMENT; wages

摘要

This article explores human capital acquisition decisions when job placement helps determine competition for a worker. With asymmetric information, workers may invest in firm-specific capital without long-term contracts. Specific investment increases promotion chances (and hence wage competition), shifting competition back to a time when firms are symmetrically uninformed. If general human capital is the efficient (output-maximizing) investment, then an equivalent firm-specific investment maximizes expected career wages. This is a general result for sellers in second-price auctions: sellers (of labor) invest to maximize the expected second-highest bidder valuation (wage), not the winner's expected valuation.