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Title: Occupational Human Capital and Wages: The Role of Skills Transferability Across Occupations
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Nawakitphaitoon, Kritkorn
Occupational Human Capital and Wages: The Role of Skills Transferability Across Occupations
Journal of Labor Research 35,1 (March 2014): 63-87.
Also: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12122-013-9172-2
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Springer
Keyword(s): Human Capital; Occupational Investment; Occupations; Skills; Wage Determination; Wages

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

This paper examines the effect of accumulated human capital, and particularly occupational human capital, on the workers’ wages. Unlike previous studies that apply occupational tenure as a proxy for occupational human capital, this paper applies the concept of Shaw’s (1984) occupational human capital to capture the transferability of occupational skills and estimates a new measure of occupational human capital, so-called occupational investment. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) from 1979 to 2000, the key findings of this paper suggest that occupational skills from the previous jobs can also affect the workers’ wages at the current job and that occupational investment is one of the important sources of wages supporting the Shaw’s original work on wage determination. Specifically, 5 years of (3-digit) occupational investment relative to current occupational tenure could lead to a wage increase of 7.7 to 18.4 %. I also find that the general labor market experience accounts for a large share of workers’ wages.
Bibliography Citation
Nawakitphaitoon, Kritkorn. "Occupational Human Capital and Wages: The Role of Skills Transferability Across Occupations." Journal of Labor Research 35,1 (March 2014): 63-87.