Specific and general skills: Concepts, dimensions, and measurements

Abstract

A number of academic debates rely on the distinction between general and specific skills as being valuable to a large number or a few firms. However, the meaning attributed to these concepts as well as empirical measurement strategies have significantly varied in the literature. To address the resulting theoretical and empirical confusion, we propose a multidimensional approach for defining skill specificity, which encompasses four distinct concepts: accessibility and similarity of skill sets as well as the portability and replaceability of skills. The former two refer to skills acquired by an individual (i.e. skills are substantively specific), while the latter two depend on the structure of labour demand and supply, institutions and firms’ strategies (i.e. on economic factors) that are time and place dependent. This paper proposes and tests empirical strategies for measuring each concept. The results challenge assumptions in the literature that graduates of vocational training and high-skilled blue-collar occupations have substantively specific skills. The multidimensional conceptualization and empirical results provide a number of theoretical implications. We focus on three conceptual debates regarding firms’ incentives to fund training, workers’ demand for social insurance and types of skills that facilitate or obstruct adjustment to technological and economic shocks.