Skills, tasks and mismatch: three essays in empirical microeconomics
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Date
29/04/2019Author
Bizopoulou, Aspasia
Metadata
Abstract
This PhD dissertation examines the role of job tasks as a means to explaining wage
inequality in the labour market. In the first chapter I study whether we can improve
our understanding of labour market mismatch and its consequences for wages
by augmenting current measures of mismatch with task information. In the second
chapter, I look at whether task-and-skill augmented mismatch is substantially different
for men and women. In the third chapter, I study whether individuals’ job
tasks and their level of difficulty change when they make transitions in the labour
market and the extent to which these changes are affected by recessions.
Chapter 1. Job Tasks and Mismatch within Occupations I propose a
new multi-dimensional measure of mismatch derived from individual-level information
on skills and tasks. Previous measures have either entirely excluded information
about tasks or have used tasks aggregated at the level of the occupation, rather than
at the individual level. I find that across nine European countries, up to 24% of
the population is mismatched in literacy and 15% in numeracy. I also find that for
Northern European countries, extreme levels of skill-task mismatch are negatively
correlated with wages and the correlation persists within occupations. Southern
and Central Europe do not appear to exhibit any correlation between mismatch
and wages, either between or within occupations. Subsequently, I compare the new
measure to existing measures of mismatch from the literature. I find that measures
based on higher levels of data aggregation or measures excluding the role of tasks
tend to consistently under-estimate the cross-sectional correlation between mismatch
and wages.
Chapter 2. Gender and Mutli-dimensional Mismatch Using a measure
of multi-dimensional mismatch developed in chapter 1, I compare mismatch in literacy
and numeracy among men and women in the labour market in a sample of
9 European countries. Previous studies on multi-dimensional mismatch have used
male-only samples due to a lack of individual-level data about female skills and tasks.
I discuss a set of stylised facts about literacy and numeracy mismatch for men and
women: men and women have similar levels of mismatch in literacy but not in numeracy,
with women experiencing less negative mismatch. In terms of outcomes,
men and women are affected by mismatch in similar ways: in most countries their
earnings are negatively affected by being under-skilled in either literacy or numeracy.
Women appear to show a slightly greater advantage than men at being over-skilled
in numeracy. Finally, I find that mismatch does not help explain part of the gender
earnings gap in a traditional Mincer model.
Chapter 3. The Task Content of Occupational Transitions over the
Business Cycle: Evidence for the UK We study the change in the task content
and the extent of up- and de-skilling of occupational transitions over the business
cycle for the UK. Previous literature shows that during recessions individuals are
less likely to move occupations - yet it is unclear whether their task portfolio and
the skill level of tasks also changes during the cycle. We use quarterly data from
the U.K. Labour Force Survey, which we match to the O*NET dictionary of tasks
for the period 1997q1 - 2016q2. We find that during recessions, individuals tend to
move to more similar occupations in terms of tasks and they are also less likely to
experience an increase in the skill requirements of their new jobs.