
Production and Learning in Teams - barry-cotter
https://www.nber.org/papers/w25179
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barry-cotter
The effect of coworkers on the learning and the productivity of an individual
is measured combining theory and data. The theory is a frictional equilibrium
model of the labor market in which production and the accumulation of human
capital of an individual are allowed to depend on the human capital of
coworkers. The data is a matched employer-employee dataset of US firms and
workers. The measured production function is supermodular. The measured human
capital function is non-linear: Workers catch-up to more knowledgeable
coworkers, but are not dragged-down by less knowledgeable ones. The market
equilibrium features a pattern of sorting of coworkers across teams that is
inefficiently positive. This inefficiency results in low human capital
individuals having too few chances to learn from more knowledgeable coworkers
and, in turn, in a stock of human capital and a flow of output that are
inefficiently low.

