Knowledge hierarchies in the labor market

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Saint-Paul, Gilles
• 署名单位: Universite de Toulouse; Universite Toulouse 1 Capitole
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2005.09.010
• 发表日期: 2007
• 页码: 104-126
• 关键词: Income distribution; information technology; computers; worker displacement; human capital; overlapping generations; KNOWLEDGE; worker assignment

摘要

Many workers produce intangible, knowledge-intensive inputs, rather than participating directly in the production process. We develop a model where the labor market organizes itself in a knowledge hierarchy. Skills are segmented into successive clusters. Each cluster buys knowledge from the next one and sells knowledge as a production input to the preceding one. The model is useful to study the impact of improvements in the technology of knowledge transmission on inequality. It is shown that inequality goes up at the top of the income distribution, but not at the bottom. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.