Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/334640 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 12284
Publisher: 
Munich Society for the Promotion of Economic Research - CESifo GmbH, Munich
Abstract: 
This paper links globalization, worker efficiency, and wage inequality within plants to internal labor market organization. Using German plant–worker data and information on the task content of occupations, we document that larger plants (i) use more occupations, (ii) assign fewer tasks per occupation, and (iii) exhibit greater wage dispersion. We develop a model where plants endogenously bundle tasks into occupations, improving worker-task matching at the cost of higher fixed span-of-control costs. Embedding this into a Melitz framework, we show that trade increases worker efficiency and wage inequality in exporting plants, whereas non-exporting plants experience the opposite effects. Structural estimation and simulations confirm the model's predictions and point to non-monotonic economy-wide effects.
Subjects: 
tasks
specialization
international trade
firm-internal labor allocation
JEL: 
F12
F16
J3
L23
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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