JAQ of all trades: Job mismatch, firm productivity and managerial quality

Abstract

We develop a novel measure of job-worker allocation quality (JAQ) by exploiting employer-employee data with machine learning techniques. Based on our measure, the quality of job-worker matching correlates positively with individual labor earnings and firm productivity, as well as with market competition, non-family firm status, and employees’ human capital. Management plays a key role in job-worker matching: when managerial hirings and firings persistently raise management quality, the matching of rank-and-file workers to their jobs improves. JAQ can be constructed from any employer–employee data set including workers’ occupations, and used to explore research questions in corporate finance and organization economics.