Interpersonal Styles and Labor Market Outcomes

By Lex Borghans, B. ter Weel, Bruce A. Weinberg. The Journal of human resources, 2008

258 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper develops a framework of the role of interpersonal interactions in the labor market. Effective interpersonal interactions involve caring and directness. The ability to perform these tasks varies with personality and the importance of these tasks varies across jobs. An assignment model shows that people are most productive in jobs that match their style. An oversupply of one attribute relative to the other reduces wages for people who are better with the attribute in greater supply. We present evidence that youth sociability affects job assignment in adulthood. The returns to interpersonal interactions are consistent with the assignment model.

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Citations in the corpus

The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market (2017, background): “9Relatedly, Borghans et al. (2008) develop a model of “interpersonal styles” where worker productivity depends on the effectiveness of interpersonal interactions, which are determined by the worker’s levels of caring and directness.”
The Labor Market Returns to Cognitive and Noncognitive Ability: Evidence from the Swedish Enlistment (2011, methodology): “Compared to IQ tests, such measures are less reliable and less precise (Borghans et al., 2008b).”
Gender gaps and the structure of local labor markets (2020, unknown): “[16] Borghans, Lex, Bas ter Weel, and Bruce Weinberg.”
Gender Gaps and the Rise of the Service Economy (2017, background): “Thus the services production function (10) is replaced by”
What Do Test Scores Miss? The Importance of Teacher Effects on Non–Test Score Outcomes (2018, unknown): “In this extended model, student outcomes 1 See Heckman and Rubinstein (2001), Waddell (2006), Borghans, Weel, and Weinberg (2008), and Lindqvist and Vestman (2011).”
Is it better to invest in hard or soft skills? (2016, background): “…of individual’s skills by job tasks is supported by empirical studies finding a statistically significant match of soft skills with job tasks (Borghans et al., 2006, 2008; Weinberger, 2011) or at least job type (Kuhn and Weinberger (2005) match leadership skills with employment in…”
The Value of Bosses (2014, unknown): “(6) qit = α0 + αi + Xitβ +(d0t/N jt + d0t-1/N m t-1 +.”
The Non-Cognitive Returns to Class Size (2008, unknown): “Another study by Borghans, ter Weel, and Weinberg (2008) found that an interpersonal trait characterized as directness has a positive effect on wages.”