Tasks, occupations and wages in OECD countries

Abstract

This article investigates the links between earnings, human capital and job tasks, using internationally comparable information from the OECD Survey of Adult Skills. The authors use the theoretical framework developed by Autor and Handel (2013) and extend their empirical results to 21 OECD countries. The data allow for a richer characterization of workers' human capital by including both educational attainment and a measure of cognitive skills. Their findings confirm the predictive power of job tasks in explaining wage differences, both between and within occupations, and provide empirical support for the model's prediction in the vast majority of countries.