Soft Skills and Their Wage Returns: Overview of Empirical Literature

• Authors: Jiří Balcar
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Psychological traits, attitudes and soft skills represent factors whose effect on an individual’s wages has begun to be examined recently. Today, there is an extensive empirical body on wage returns to the first two factors, but still a relatively small one on wage returns to soft skills, such as communication, cooperation, leadership etc. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of empirical literature on wage returns to soft skills. It suggests that soft skills are connected with significant wage returns and contribute to closing the gender wage gap. The end of the paper focuses on a discussion on methodological approaches to measurement of soft skills and relevancy of their approximation by job characteristics (incl. suggestion of using tools of competency modelling for this purpose).

Keywords

EN

Soft skills; wage returns; wage gap; skills-job match

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Review of Economic Perspectives
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 14
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 3-15

Dates

published

2014-03-01

online

2014-04-12

Contributors

author

Jiří Balcar

• VSB - Technical University of Ostrava, Economic faculty, Sokolská třída 33, 701 21 Ostrava

References

• ANDRISANI, P. J. (1977). Internal-External Attitudes, Personal Initiative, and the Labor Market Experience of Blackand White Men. The Journal of Human Resources, 12 (3). Pp. 308-328. DOI: 10.2307/145493[Crossref]
• BACOLOD, M., BLUM, B. S. (2008). Two Sides of the Same Coin: U.S. “Residual” Inequality and the Gender Gap. Retrieved June 1, 2012, from http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/bblum/personal/2%20sides.pdf
• BALCAR, J. (2012). Supply Side Wage Determinants: Overview of Empirical Literature. Review of Economic Perspectives, 12 (4). Pp 207-222. DOI: 10.7327/cerei.2011.03.01[Crossref]
• BALCAR, J. (2011). Future skills needs in EU and skills transferability in 2020: Sector meta-analysis. ER - Central European Review of Economic Issues, 14 (1). Pp. 5-20.
• BALCAR, J., HOMOLOVÁ, E., KARÁSEK, Z. et al. (2011). Transferable competences across economic sectors: Role and importance for Employment at European level. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. ISBN 978-92-79-20946-8.
• BLACK, S. E., SPITZ-OENER, A. (2007). Explaining Women’s Success: Technological Change and the Skill Content of Women’s Work. Retrieved June 1, 2012, from http://ftp.iza.org/dp2803.pdf [WoS]
• BORGHANS, L., WEEL, B. ter, WEINBERG, B. A. (2008). Interpersonal Styles and Labor Market Outcomes. Journal of Human Resources, 43 (4). Pp. 815-858.[WoS][Crossref]
• BORGHANS, L., WEEL, B. ter, WEINBERG, B. A. (2006). People People: Social Capital and the Labor-Market Outcomes of Underrepresented Groups. Retrieved June 1, 2012, from http://www.nber.org/papers/w11985.pdf CONTI, G., GALEOTTI, A., MUELLER, G., PUDNEY, S. (2009). Popularity. Retrieved June 1, 2012, from http://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/publications/working-papers/iser/2009-03.pdf DUNIFON, R., DUNCAN, G. J. (1998). Long-Run Effects of Motivation on Labor- Market Success. Social Psychology Quarterly, 61 (1). Pp. 33-48.
• FORTIN, N. M. (2008). The Gender m among Young Adults in the United States: The Importance of Money vs. People. Journal of Human Resources, 43 (4). Pp. 884-918. DOI: 10.1353/jhr.2008.0006[Crossref][WoS]
• KUBEŠ, M., SPILLEROVÁ, D., KURNICKÝ, R. (2004). Manažerské competence. Praha: Gradiva Publishing. ISBN 80-247-0698-9.
• KUHN, P., WEINBERGER, C. (2005). Leadership Skills and Wages. Journal of Labor Economics, 23 (3). Pp. 395-436. DOI: 10.1086/430282[Crossref]
• MACHIN, S., MCINTOSH, S., VIGNOLES, A., VIITANEN, T. (2001). Basic Skills, Soft Skills and Labour Market Outcomes: Secondary Analysis of the National Child Development Study. Retrieved June 1, 2012, from https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/RR250.pdf NSP (2011). Manuál pro tvorbu katalogu Národní soustavy povolání, určeno pro členy sektorových rad, expertních týmů a pracovních skupin, ver. 2. Retrieved June 1, 2012, from http://katalog.nsp.cz/Napoveda/Manual_pro_SR_NSP_II.pdf REBER, A. S., REBER, E. (2001). The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-051451-1.
• SEMYKINA, A., LINZ, S. J. (2007). Gender differences in personality and earnings: Evidence from Russia. Journal of Economic Psychology, 28 (3). Pp. 387-410. DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2006.05.004[Crossref]
• STATT, D. A. (1998). The Concise Dictionary of Psychology. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-17939-4.
• TURNER, Ch. F., MARTINEZ, D. C. (1977). Socioeconomic Achievement and the Machiavellian Personality. Sociometry, 40 (4). Pp. 325-336. DOI: 10.2307/3033481[Crossref]
• WEINBERGER, C. (2011). The Increasing Complementarity between Cognitive and Social Skills, Retrieved June 1, 2012, from http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~weinberg/MathSocialWeinberger.pdf

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/revecp-2014-0001