In large firms, management resolves a trade off between hiring more versus better workers. The span of control or size is therefore intimately intertwined with the sorting pattern. Span of control is at the center of many studies in macroeconomics, comparisons of factor productivity, trade, and labor. With heterogeneous workers, we analyze the worker assignment, firm size, and wages. The patter...

In this paper, I analyze a general equilibrium on-the-job search model with endogenous search intensity and heterogenous workers and firms. Wages are set through bargaining as in Cahuc, Postel-Vinay, and Robin (2006). I provide proof of existence and uniqueness of steady state equilibrium. Given equally efficient search on and off the job, I provide proof that the equilibrium firm productivity ...

The Swedish adult education program known as the Knowledge Lift (1997–2002) was unprecedented in its size and scope, aiming to raise the skill level of large numbers of low-skill workers. This paper evaluates the potential effects of this program on aggregate labor market outcomes. This is done by calibrating an equilibrium search model with heterogeneous worker skills using pre-program data an...

The Division of Labour, Worker Organisation, and Technological Change The model developed in this paper explains differences in the division of labour across firms as a result of computer technology adoption. We find that changes in the division of labour can result both from reduced production time and from improved communication possibilities. The first shifts the division of labour towards a...

Schooling raises individuals' scores on cognitive tests. It also raises individual earnings. What is the connection between these two facts? Many have interpreted the substantial economic returns to schooling as evidence for the importance of cognitive skills as a determinant of individual earnings. But skill enhancement is not the only way schooling a ects earnings. We shall argue that schooli...

Using comparable data sets for five African countries we estimate, and evaluate possible explanations for, the employer size wage effect across these. Our results indicate, just as has been generally found for other developing and developed nations, that apart from observable worker characteristics most potential theories cannot explain very much of the wage premium received in larger firms. Mo...

Standard neo-classical trade theory predicts that trade liberalisation should cause a fall in wage inequality in developing countries through a decrease in the relative demand for skilled labour. Recent studies of a number of developing countries, however, find evidence to the contrary. Using a panel of manufacturing firms in the 1990s we investigate whether skill-biased technological change in...

We introduce skill chaining, a skill discovery method for reinforcement learning agents in continuous domains. Skill chaining produces chains of skills leading to an end-of-task reward. We demonstrate experimentally that skill chaining is able to create appropriate skills in a challenging continuous domain and that doing so results in performance gains.

Current concerns over reforming engineering education have focused attention on helping students develop skills and an adaptive expertise. Phenomenological guidelines for instruction along these lines can be understood as arising out of an emerging theory of thinking and learning built on results in the neural, cognitive, and behavioral sciences. We outline this framework and consider some of i...