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Abstract:
This paper proposes and estimates a model of occupational choice with multi- dimensional skills, time-varying skill prices and labor market frictions to understand the evolution of the wage structure since 1979 for low skilled men. A worker’s multi- dimensional skills are exploited differently across different occupations. We allow for a rich specification of technological change which has heterogenous effects on different occupations and different parts of the skill distribution. We estimate the model com- bining three datasets: (1) O*NET, to measure skill intensity across occupations, (2) NLSY, to identify life-cycle supply effects, and (3) CPS, to estimate the evolution of skill prices and occupations over time. We find that a) reallocation of labor across oc- cupations is hard to understand with a competitive model, b) occupational composition is substantially less important than within-occupation skill prices in explaining both the evolution of both medan wages and inequality, c) lifecycle wage growth depends on a combination of different skills, d) the premium to interpersonal skills has gone up most sharply for these workers.