The Allocation of Talent over the Business Cycle and its Effect on Sectoral Productivity

Michael Boehm and Martin Watzinger

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: It is well documented that graduates enter different occupations in recessions than in booms. In this article, we examine the impact of this reallocation for long-term productivity and output across sectors. We develop a model in which talent flows to stable sectors in recessions and to cyclical sectors in booms. We find evidence for the predicted change in productivity caused by the business cycle in a setting where output can be readily measured: economists starting or graduating from their PhD in a recession are significantly more productive over the long term than economists starting or graduating in a boom.

Keywords: Talent allocation; sectoral productivity; business cycle; roy model; PhD economists (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E32 I23 J22 J23 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-lab and nep-lma
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1143.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The allocation of talent over the business cycle and its effect on sectoral productivity (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1143

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().