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  5. Does Turnover Inhibit Specialization? Evidence from a Skill Survey in Peru

American Economic Review: Insights

ISSN 2640-205X (Print) | ISSN 2640-2068 (Online)

Does Turnover Inhibit Specialization? Evidence from a Skill Survey in Peru

  • Andrea Atencio-De-Leon
  • Munseob Lee
  • Claudia Macaluso
American Economic Review: Insights (Forthcoming)

Abstract

We design, pilot, and field a new survey of job skills in Peru, to investigate human capital differences between poor and rich countries. Peruvian jobs have markedly more uniform skill profiles than jobs in the US. On the other hand, matching frictions are no more severe than in the US, and recruiting technology is largely equivalent as well. We propose a stylized model in the O-ring tradition, in which a labor demand preference for unspecialized workers can endogenously arise when there is uncertainty about labor availability.

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