Production and Learning in Teams
研究同事质量如何影响工人的人力资本增长，发现学习效应占在职人力资本积累的三分之二，且技术变化可能加剧劳动力市场隔离并降低总产出。
To what extent is a worker's human capital growth affected by the quality of his coworkers? To answer this question, we develop and estimate a model in which the productivity and the human capital growth of an individual depend on the average human capital of his coworkers. The measured production function is supermodular: The marginal product of a more knowledgeable individual is increasing in the human capital of his coworkers. The measured human capital accumulation function is convex: An individual's human capital growth is increasing in coworkers' human capital only when paired with more knowledgeable coworkers, but independent of coworkers' human capital when paired with less knowledgeable coworkers. Learning from coworkers accounts for two thirds of the stock of human capital accumulated on the job. Technological changes that increase production supermodularity lead to labor market segregation and, by reducing the opportunities for low human capital workers to learn from better coworkers, lead to a decline in aggregate human capital and output.