Pub Date : 2025-08-06DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102761
Marie Lalanne
Social contacts help getting a job through two mechanisms: by providing information on job opportunities or working conditions to job seekers and by providing information on candidates to employers. This paper shows empirical evidence of the second mechanism: social contacts bring job referrals. I use extensive data on social networks and referrals on all directors of large listed US companies between 2004 and 2008. Compared to non-connected new directors, connected new directors are 14% more likely to be referred by current board members with whom they share employment history. Theoretical predictions help discriminating between information provision and favoritism: referrals help select directors with higher ability, in particular the type of ability that is at best only partially observed at the time of hiring.
{"title":"Social networks and job referrals in recruitment","authors":"Marie Lalanne","doi":"10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102761","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102761","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Social contacts help getting a job through two mechanisms: by providing information on job opportunities or working conditions to job seekers and by providing information on candidates to employers. This paper shows empirical evidence of the second mechanism: social contacts bring job referrals. I use extensive data on social networks and referrals on all directors of large listed US companies between 2004 and 2008. Compared to non-connected new directors, connected new directors are 14% more likely to be referred by current board members with whom they share employment history. Theoretical predictions help discriminating between information provision and favoritism: referrals help select directors with higher ability, in particular the type of ability that is at best only partially observed at the time of hiring.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48153,"journal":{"name":"Labour Economics","volume":"97 ","pages":"Article 102761"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145050113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-08-01DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102753
Øystein M. Hernæs
This study examines whether performance-based pay for private employment service providers improves employment outcomes for program participants compared to traditional hourly compensation. Finding effective ways to outsource public services to external providers has the potential to improve the quality and efficiency of these services. Using a large-scale randomized controlled trial (RCT) conducted in Norway from April 2018 to December 2021, we evaluate the impact of different payment models on the performance of private firms in delivering labor market programs. A total of 4898 unemployed individuals were randomly assigned to either a treatment group (37 %), where providers received performance-based pay contingent on participants’ employment outcomes, or a control group (63 %), where providers were compensated on an hourly basis. Despite the substantial financial incentives involved, our findings reveal no significant differences in employment rates, earnings, or hours worked between the two groups. The results allow us to rule out effects on monthly earnings of ± €5 and employment effects of ± 1 percentage points after 12 months. There were no indications of heterogeneous treatment effects across different participant groups. A cost-benefit analysis suggests a supportive case for performance pay due to lower public costs, although this estimate is subject to uncertainty.
{"title":"Performance pay for private program providers and impact on participants: A field experiment with employment services in Norway","authors":"Øystein M. Hernæs","doi":"10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102753","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102753","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines whether performance-based pay for private employment service providers improves employment outcomes for program participants compared to traditional hourly compensation. Finding effective ways to outsource public services to external providers has the potential to improve the quality and efficiency of these services. Using a large-scale randomized controlled trial (RCT) conducted in Norway from April 2018 to December 2021, we evaluate the impact of different payment models on the performance of private firms in delivering labor market programs. A total of 4898 unemployed individuals were randomly assigned to either a treatment group (37 %), where providers received performance-based pay contingent on participants’ employment outcomes, or a control group (63 %), where providers were compensated on an hourly basis. Despite the substantial financial incentives involved, our findings reveal no significant differences in employment rates, earnings, or hours worked between the two groups. The results allow us to rule out effects on monthly earnings of ± €5 and employment effects of ± 1 percentage points after 12 months. There were no indications of heterogeneous treatment effects across different participant groups. A cost-benefit analysis suggests a supportive case for performance pay due to lower public costs, although this estimate is subject to uncertainty.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48153,"journal":{"name":"Labour Economics","volume":"95 ","pages":"Article 102753"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144934142","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-08-01DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102762
Lennart Ziegler , Omar Bamieh
While many women stop working for an extended period after the birth of a child, well-designed parental leave policies can incentivize mothers to return to the labor market sooner. This study examines the effect of two recent parental leave reforms in Austria that allow parents to choose leave schemes with varying duration. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that the introduction of more flexible scheme choices led mothers to take, on average, 1–2 months less of leave. This decrease in leave duration, however, was not accompanied by an employment increase of similar magnitude. To understand the absence of labor supply effects, we examine data on work preferences from the Austrian Microcensus. Child care duties are cited as the primary reason for not seeking work but few mothers indicate that they would start working if better access to formal childcare were available. Switching to the more flexible leave system had a minimal effect on the labor market choices of mothers, as the majority continue to prioritize child care responsibilities and do not consider nurseries as a desirable alternative. Our findings suggest that policy efforts to shorten parental leave may not be effective in the presence of strong family norms.
{"title":"Does a flexible parental leave system stimulate maternal employment?","authors":"Lennart Ziegler , Omar Bamieh","doi":"10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102762","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102762","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>While many women stop working for an extended period after the birth of a child, well-designed parental leave policies can incentivize mothers to return to the labor market sooner. This study examines the effect of two recent parental leave reforms in Austria that allow parents to choose leave schemes with varying duration. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that the introduction of more flexible scheme choices led mothers to take, on average, 1–2 months less of leave. This decrease in leave duration, however, was not accompanied by an employment increase of similar magnitude. To understand the absence of labor supply effects, we examine data on work preferences from the Austrian Microcensus. Child care duties are cited as the primary reason for not seeking work but few mothers indicate that they would start working if better access to formal childcare were available. Switching to the more flexible leave system had a minimal effect on the labor market choices of mothers, as the majority continue to prioritize child care responsibilities and do not consider nurseries as a desirable alternative. Our findings suggest that policy efforts to shorten parental leave may not be effective in the presence of strong family norms.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48153,"journal":{"name":"Labour Economics","volume":"95 ","pages":"Article 102762"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144933693","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-08-01DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102755
Bernd Fitzenberger , Anna Heusler , Anna Houštecká , Leonie Wicht
Entries into firm-based vocational education and training (VET) stagnated in Germany during the 2010s and decreased by 11% between 2019 and 2020, which is likely to exacerbate future shortages of skilled workers. Against this backdrop, we study the VET market through the lens of a matching function estimated at the occupation by district level between 2013 and 2021. We employ a novel strategy to instrument for applicants and vacancies which draws on differences in local labor market conditions for different occupations. Our estimated matching elasticities for applicants and vacancies are 0.46 and 0.57, respectively. Matching efficiency shows a slight downward trend before Covid and a large drop during Covid. Using our estimates to decompose aggregate trends in matches, we find that while matching efficiency and applicants drove matches down before Covid, the increase in vacancies until 2019 stabilized the VET market. During Covid, the drop in applicants, vacancies, and matching efficiency contributed similarly to the sudden drop of matches. Furthermore, without the increase in migrants applying to VET positions, demographic change alone would have led to an even greater decline in matches already before Covid. Changes in occupational and regional mismatch did little in explaining the overall trend in matches.
{"title":"The composition of applicants, mismatch, and matching efficiency in the German VET market","authors":"Bernd Fitzenberger , Anna Heusler , Anna Houštecká , Leonie Wicht","doi":"10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102755","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102755","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Entries into firm-based vocational education and training (VET) stagnated in Germany during the 2010s and decreased by 11% between 2019 and 2020, which is likely to exacerbate future shortages of skilled workers. Against this backdrop, we study the VET market through the lens of a matching function estimated at the occupation by district level between 2013 and 2021. We employ a novel strategy to instrument for applicants and vacancies which draws on differences in local labor market conditions for different occupations. Our estimated matching elasticities for applicants and vacancies are 0.46 and 0.57, respectively. Matching efficiency shows a slight downward trend before Covid and a large drop during Covid. Using our estimates to decompose aggregate trends in matches, we find that while matching efficiency and applicants drove matches down before Covid, the increase in vacancies until 2019 stabilized the VET market. During Covid, the drop in applicants, vacancies, and matching efficiency contributed similarly to the sudden drop of matches. Furthermore, without the increase in migrants applying to VET positions, demographic change alone would have led to an even greater decline in matches already before Covid. Changes in occupational and regional mismatch did little in explaining the overall trend in matches.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48153,"journal":{"name":"Labour Economics","volume":"95 ","pages":"Article 102755"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144934144","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-08-01DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102746
Daniel Goller , Christian Gschwendt , Stefan C. Wolter
We show the causal influence of the launch of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the form of ChatGPT on the search behavior of young people for apprenticeship vacancies. To estimate the short- and medium-term effects, we use a variety of methods, including a difference-in-discontinuity approach exploiting the exogenous nature of the unanticipated launch of ChatGPT in 2022. There is a strong short- and medium-term decline in the intensity of searches for vacancies, indicating a notable reduction in the supply of young people actively seeking apprenticeships and suggesting great uncertainty among the affected cohort. Occupations with a high proportion of cognitive tasks and with high demands on language skills were particularly affected by the decline. Interestingly, the revealed preferences in the search behavior of young job seekers contrasted with previous expert assessments on the automation risks of occupations and aligned with the most recent assessments of the AI and language model exposure of occupations – before these new assessments existed. Notably, while the supply decline did not reduce the number of signed apprenticeship contracts, we find evidence of declining applicant quality, particularly for commercial employees, the most widely offered apprenticeship in Switzerland.
{"title":"This time it’s different – Generative artificial intelligence and occupational choice","authors":"Daniel Goller , Christian Gschwendt , Stefan C. Wolter","doi":"10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102746","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102746","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We show the causal influence of the launch of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the form of ChatGPT on the search behavior of young people for apprenticeship vacancies. To estimate the short- and medium-term effects, we use a variety of methods, including a difference-in-discontinuity approach exploiting the exogenous nature of the unanticipated launch of ChatGPT in 2022. There is a strong short- and medium-term decline in the intensity of searches for vacancies, indicating a notable reduction in the supply of young people actively seeking apprenticeships and suggesting great uncertainty among the affected cohort. Occupations with a high proportion of cognitive tasks and with high demands on language skills were particularly affected by the decline. Interestingly, the revealed preferences in the search behavior of young job seekers contrasted with previous expert assessments on the automation risks of occupations and aligned with the most recent assessments of the AI and language model exposure of occupations – before these new assessments existed. Notably, while the supply decline did not reduce the number of signed apprenticeship contracts, we find evidence of declining applicant quality, particularly for commercial employees, the most widely offered apprenticeship in Switzerland.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48153,"journal":{"name":"Labour Economics","volume":"95 ","pages":"Article 102746"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144934147","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-08-01DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102758
Jaan Masso , Jaanika Meriküll , Liis Roosaar , Kärt Rõigas , Tiiu Paas
This paper focuses on two mechanisms that could explain the persistence of the gender pay gap – salary negotiations and child penalty. The academic sector is studied using administrative data from the University of Tartu, the largest university in Estonia. Data on academic staff from 2012 to 2021 have been merged with the population register and web-scraped data from Scopus. The role of negotiations is evaluated by deriving, for each academic field, their outside option earnings using administrative records of graduates, and the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition is applied to evaluate whether men and women leverage this outside option differently in their salaries in academia. The child penalty in academia is estimated using a quasi-experimental event-study approach where we exploit the panel dimension of our data. We find that men obtain higher returns than women from the same outside option during salary negotiations. Given that men and women are subject to evaluation and wage negotiations with equal frequency in academia, we assign this gap to women being less effective negotiators. We find the child penalty for women in academia to be short-lived, resulting from a decline in working hours equal to two and a half years of full-time work spread over five years after childbirth. There is no statistically significant child penalty for women in terms of hourly wages, publications, or citations. Men, in contrast, do not experience any penalties related to children.
{"title":"What determines the gender pay gap in academia?","authors":"Jaan Masso , Jaanika Meriküll , Liis Roosaar , Kärt Rõigas , Tiiu Paas","doi":"10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102758","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102758","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper focuses on two mechanisms that could explain the persistence of the gender pay gap – salary negotiations and child penalty. The academic sector is studied using administrative data from the University of Tartu, the largest university in Estonia. Data on academic staff from 2012 to 2021 have been merged with the population register and web-scraped data from Scopus. The role of negotiations is evaluated by deriving, for each academic field, their outside option earnings using administrative records of graduates, and the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition is applied to evaluate whether men and women leverage this outside option differently in their salaries in academia. The child penalty in academia is estimated using a quasi-experimental event-study approach where we exploit the panel dimension of our data. We find that men obtain higher returns than women from the same outside option during salary negotiations. Given that men and women are subject to evaluation and wage negotiations with equal frequency in academia, we assign this gap to women being less effective negotiators. We find the child penalty for women in academia to be short-lived, resulting from a decline in working hours equal to two and a half years of full-time work spread over five years after childbirth. There is no statistically significant child penalty for women in terms of hourly wages, publications, or citations. Men, in contrast, do not experience any penalties related to children.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48153,"journal":{"name":"Labour Economics","volume":"95 ","pages":"Article 102758"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144933691","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-08-01DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102742
Lukas Hörnig , Max Schäfer
In this paper, we study the house price effects of local school choice opportunities among public primary schools using a rare and large-scale reform that abolished binding catchment areas in North Rhine-Westphalia, the largest German state with 18 million inhabitants. To estimate the reform’s effect on valuations of houses, we compare houses with different local school choice sets, before and after the reform. We find that gaining access to a school within 2,000 meters and with a higher transition rate to the academic track (relative to the initial neighborhood school) increases house prices by 1.5 percent. This effect is larger when the more attractive school is closer and diminishes as distance grows. The full reform effect materializes roughly five years after reform onset.
{"title":"The value of school choice opportunities","authors":"Lukas Hörnig , Max Schäfer","doi":"10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102742","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102742","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this paper, we study the house price effects of local school choice opportunities among public primary schools using a rare and large-scale reform that abolished binding catchment areas in North Rhine-Westphalia, the largest German state with 18 million inhabitants. To estimate the reform’s effect on valuations of houses, we compare houses with different local school choice sets, before and after the reform. We find that gaining access to a school within 2,000 meters and with a higher transition rate to the academic track (relative to the initial neighborhood school) increases house prices by 1.5 percent. This effect is larger when the more attractive school is closer and diminishes as distance grows. The full reform effect materializes roughly five years after reform onset.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48153,"journal":{"name":"Labour Economics","volume":"95 ","pages":"Article 102742"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144934145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-08-01DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102750
Alex Bryson , Harald Dale-Olsen
Workers’ job mobility decisions are related to firms’ wage policies but also depend on tax schedules. Using Norwegian population-wide administrative linked employer-employee data for 2010–2019, we study how the job-to-job turnover of employees is affected by marginal taxes and firms’ pay policies, thus drawing inferences on job search behaviour. By paying higher wages, job-to-job separation rates drop, but this negative relationship is weakened when income taxes increase, consistent with higher taxes reducing search activity. However, consistent with theory, the tax effect is smaller where workers receive performance bonuses.
{"title":"Job search under changing labour taxes","authors":"Alex Bryson , Harald Dale-Olsen","doi":"10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102750","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102750","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Workers’ job mobility decisions are related to firms’ wage policies but also depend on tax schedules. Using Norwegian population-wide administrative linked employer-employee data for 2010–2019, we study how the job-to-job turnover of employees is affected by marginal taxes and firms’ pay policies, thus drawing inferences on job search behaviour. By paying higher wages, job-to-job separation rates drop, but this negative relationship is weakened when income taxes increase, consistent with higher taxes reducing search activity. However, consistent with theory, the tax effect is smaller where workers receive performance bonuses.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48153,"journal":{"name":"Labour Economics","volume":"95 ","pages":"Article 102750"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144934148","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-08-01DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102752
Tom Günther , Jakob Conradi , Clemens Hetschko
Unemployment influences people’s life satisfaction beyond negative income shocks. A large body of literature investigates these non-pecuniary costs of unemployment and stresses the importance of social norms, especially for men. We add to this literature by showing that norm non-compliance may equally inflate the non-pecuniary loss of well-being for unemployed women. Using German panel data, we use the German division as a natural experiment to compare unemployment-related life satisfaction losses between different cohorts of East and West German women. We hypothesise that being exposed to different legal norms concerning workforce participation and different opportunity cost of working after the division shaped social identities and thus social norms around work for the two German female populations in different ways. East German women were required to work whereas West German women were expected to focus on family care. We find that East German women suffer significantly more from unemployment than West German women. This difference is driven entirely by East German females who were exclusively raised in the former GDR. We do not find such diverging patterns for German men. Our findings imply that women suffer as much as men from unemployment if socialised in the same way.
{"title":"Socialism, identity and the well-being of unemployed women","authors":"Tom Günther , Jakob Conradi , Clemens Hetschko","doi":"10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102752","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102752","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Unemployment influences people’s life satisfaction beyond negative income shocks. A large body of literature investigates these non-pecuniary costs of unemployment and stresses the importance of social norms, especially for men. We add to this literature by showing that norm non-compliance may equally inflate the non-pecuniary loss of well-being for unemployed women. Using German panel data, we use the German division as a natural experiment to compare unemployment-related life satisfaction losses between different cohorts of East and West German women. We hypothesise that being exposed to different legal norms concerning workforce participation and different opportunity cost of working after the division shaped social identities and thus social norms around work for the two German female populations in different ways. East German women were required to work whereas West German women were expected to focus on family care. We find that East German women suffer significantly more from unemployment than West German women. This difference is driven entirely by East German females who were exclusively raised in the former GDR. We do not find such diverging patterns for German men. Our findings imply that women suffer as much as men from unemployment if socialised in the same way.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48153,"journal":{"name":"Labour Economics","volume":"95 ","pages":"Article 102752"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144933695","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-08-01DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102754
Luca Fontanelli , Flavio Calvino , Chiara Criscuolo , Lionel Nesta , Elena Verdolini
This paper investigates how firms’ occupational structure shapes the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) using matched administrative data on French firms and relying on an instrumental variable Probit model. We identify ICT engineers as the only occupational group with a robust and statistically significant effect on AI adoption. This finding holds for ICT and non-ICT Services sectors, and regardless of whether AI is developed in-house or acquired externally. Our estimates suggest that closing the occupational gap between adopters and non-adopters would require approximately 215,000 additional ICT engineers, and 45,000 for the firms most exposed to AI. The results highlight the critical importance of investing in advanced digital skills to support the broader diffusion of AI technologies.
{"title":"Human after all: Occupations at the core of AI adoption","authors":"Luca Fontanelli , Flavio Calvino , Chiara Criscuolo , Lionel Nesta , Elena Verdolini","doi":"10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102754","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102754","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper investigates how firms’ occupational structure shapes the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) using matched administrative data on French firms and relying on an instrumental variable Probit model. We identify ICT engineers as the only occupational group with a robust and statistically significant effect on AI adoption. This finding holds for ICT and non-ICT Services sectors, and regardless of whether AI is developed in-house or acquired externally. Our estimates suggest that closing the occupational gap between adopters and non-adopters would require approximately 215,000 additional ICT engineers, and 45,000 for the firms most exposed to AI. The results highlight the critical importance of investing in advanced digital skills to support the broader diffusion of AI technologies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48153,"journal":{"name":"Labour Economics","volume":"95 ","pages":"Article 102754"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144934143","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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