Technical skill bias as a response of firms to unemployment: A matching model with applicant ranking and endogenous skill requirements

Abstract

This paper considers an economy with heterogeneous workers where identical firms optimally decide on the degree of complexity of jobs. Meetings are depicted by an urn-ball process where firms rank their applicants and pick the best one. We show that a general rise in unemployment induces an increase in the employment shares of high-skilled workers which, in turn, makes firms choose more complex jobs, leading then to a decrease in the output of low-skilled workers. The technical skill bias is therefore related to the usual explanations of unemployment. Next, we state that a decentralized equilibrium is efficient in terms of job complexity but inefficient in terms of job creation when firms internalize the usual congestion effect. We then extend the analysis to a dynamic model.