Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/286701 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Series/Report no.: 
CHCP Working Paper No. 2022-02
Publisher: 
The University of Western Ontario, Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP), London (Ontario)
Abstract: 
I develop an assignment model of occupations with multidimensional heterogeneity in production tasks and worker skills. Tasks are distributed continuously in the skill space, whereas workers have a discrete distribution with a finite number of types. Occupations arise endogenously as bundles of tasks optimally assigned to a type of worker. The model allows us to study how occupations respond to changes in the economic environment, making it useful for analyzing the implications of automation, skill-biased technical change, offshoring, and worker training. Using the model, I characterize how wages, the marginal product of workers, the substitutability between worker types, and the labor share depend on the assignment of tasks to workers. I introduce automation as the choice of the optimal size and location of a mass of identical robots in the task space. Automation displaces workers by replacing them in the performance of tasks, generating a cascading effect on other workers as the boundaries of occupations are redrawn.
Subjects: 
Occupations
tasks
automation
assignment
skill mismatch
JEL: 
C78
E24
J23
J24
J31
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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