Skill mismatch and labour turnover in a developing country: the Colombian case

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The series Working Papers on Economics is published by the Office for Economic Studies at the Banco de la República (Central Bank of Colombia). The works published are provisional, and their authors are fully responsible for the opinions expressed in them, as well as for possible mistakes. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Banco de la República or its Board of Directors.

AUTHOR OR EDITOR
Luz Adriana Flórez
Leidy Gómez D.

The series Borradores de Economía (Working Papers on Economics) contributes to the dissemination and promotion of the work by researchers from the institution. On multiple occasions, these works have been the result of collaborative work with individuals from other national or international institutions. This series is indexed at Research Papers in Economics (RePEc)

Publication Date:
Thursday, 26 December 2019

The opinions contained in this document are the sole responsibility of the author and do not commit Banco de la República or its Board of Directors.

 

Abstract

 

The objective of this paper is to analyze the impact of skill mismatch on labour turnover for the case of Colombia. Our work follows the of the job matching theory of Jovanovic (1979a, 1979b, 1984). In line with this theory we find a positive relationship between skill mismatch and labour turnover (measured as the worker reallocation rate) using a panel of 23 cities for the period 2009-2017. Our results suggest that cities with a higher proportion of mismatched workers present higher worker reallocation rates. In this case one standard deviation of increment in the proportion of mismatch workers increases the WR rate around 0.12 standard deviations. This result is explained mainly by the increase on separations as is suggested by the theory.