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Source: MERIT
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Borghans, Lex
Ter Weel, Bas
Weinberg, Bruce A.
People People
Working Paper, Maastricht University, July 2004.
Also: http://meritbbs.unimaas.nl/staff/bas/publications/english/pp.pdf
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology
Keyword(s): Fertility; Hispanics; Wages

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

There are many indicators that interpersonal interactions are important for understanding individual outcomes and are becoming more important. Yet, empirical work suggests that thereturns to people skills have remained low and people people have not progressed to the top of the job hierarchy. This paper develops a unified model to understand the role of people skills in the labor market, including task assignment and wages. We model interactions between people, letting individuals feel social pressure to help others, and affect the amount of social pressure experienced by others. We assume that people are heterogeneous with respect to caring and that jobs are heterogeneous with respect to the importance of caring. Consistent with our model, we find that as people skills become more important, the women's share of an occupation increases, but the employment shares of blacks, Hispanics, immigrants, and people with poor English decrease. We also show in an assignment context that within caring jobs, the importance of caring is positively rewarded but that overall labor demand and supply may lead to a negative effect of being caring on wages. We present evidence that computers, team production and innovative work practices, complement people skills. Lastly, we present evidence that people people volunteer
Bibliography Citation
Borghans, Lex, Bas Ter Weel and Bruce A. Weinberg. "People People." Working Paper, Maastricht University, July 2004.