SPIKE · Specialization in the Knowledge Economy
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2018-03-15 → 2020-03-14
- EU contribution
- €158,122
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Specialization in the Knowledge Economy
The steady rise in the participation of service sector in the European Union’s economy is undeniable, as it now represents the 75% of the GDP according to the World Bank. As these industries increase their relevance in the economy, it becomes more necessary to re-think about how we understand the classical theory of physical capital and ownership rights to understand productivity, since in this type of industries, human assets are the main input. Machines are different to employees; they can be owned, whereas human beings cannot. Human beings accumulate two types of capital: human –knowing what- and social –knowing who. In this project, I aim to understand how these types of capital affect the organization of firms and economies, with the goal of providing insights into the determinants of productivity and governance. This multidisciplinary project, composed of three sections, will provide insights to businesses and policy makers to enhance growth in the knowledge economy. Interactions and knowledge become fundamental to understand how human beings develop inputs in the service sector. For this reason, it becomes essential to comprehend the role that human and social capital play in the performance of firms since not all industries rely in the same input. In some service firms productivity depends more on the social capital—that is the connections, who knows who. In other industries, these skills are less relevant, and the knowledge, who knows what, becomes a determinant factor in the firm’s outcomes. The aim of this project is to contribute to literature on the knowledge economy by studying how these two types of capital affect the organisation of firms as they become determinants of productivity and governance.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Human beings accumulate two types of capital: human –knowing what- and social –knowing who. In this project, I aim to understand how these types of capital affect the organization of firms and economies, with the goal of providing insights into the determinants of productivity and governance. This multidisciplinary project, composed of three sections, will provide insights to businesses and policy makers to enhance growth in the knowledge economy. In the first section, I use data from the US lobbying industry to deepen our understanding of social capital and its dynamics. Using the relational contracting literature as a theoretical framework, I will quantify the importance of lobbyist-client relationships by exploiting exogenous switches to the lobbyist’s social capital. The section aims to inform the policy debate on how to reduce political corruption and improve the quality of regulation in advocacy services. In the second section, I study the effects of human capital differences emerging from specialization across fields. I present a theoretical model where employees might face tasks they cannot solve. The firm has to optimally design a rule to help them choose between passing these problems to managers in their division or to employees in other divisions. I test the theory using Mexican consulting firms’ data, which contain detailed information on frequency and types of interactions for all workers. The section aims to guide firms on how structure their divisions to increase productivity and operational efficiency. In a similar vein, the third section explores the effects of specialization across clients. Using data from a Colombian security services firm, I will use client-fixed effects estimations to study whether client-specific skills are more important than other skills for the performance of security guards. The goal is to provide guidance to increase the efficiency of the work load as well as the optimal allocation from workers to clients.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSIDAD POMPEU FABRA · BarcelonaCoordinatorSpain
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union