Learning spillovers in the firm

Arbeitspapier

To produce output for a firm, coworkers often interact. This paper examines the possibility that as a byproduct of these interactions, there are learning spillovers: coworkers learn general skills from each other that increase future productivity. In the first part of t he paper I show that l earnings pillovers imply externalities in the return to human capital which firms may not internalize when there is asymmetric information. As a result, individuals may inefficiently invest in their own education. Next, I show that learning spillovers are empirically relevant. Using matched administrative data from Sweden and a combination of fixed effects and controls to address bias from worker sorting and firm heterogeneity, I find that increasing the average education of a given worker's coworkers by 10 percentage points increases that worker's wages in the following year by 0.3%, which is significant at the 1% level. The effect is persistent, decreases with age, and is higher for workers in occupations where they interact more regularly with their coworkers.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Working Paper ; No. 2020:14

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity ; Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
• Subject: Human Capital Accumulation ; Diffusion of Knowledge ; Learning

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Nix, Emily
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy (IFAU)
• (where): Uppsala
• (when): 2020

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/246023
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET