TY  - JOUR
AU  - Jovanovic,Boyan
AU  - Rousseau,Peter L.
TI  - Specific Capital and Technological Variety
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13998
PY  - 2008
Y2  - May 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13998
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13998.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Boyan Jovanovic
New York University
Department of Economics
19 W. 4th Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY  10012
Tel: 212/998-8953
Fax: 212/995-4186
E-Mail: Boyan.Jovanovic@nyu.edu

Peter L. Rousseau
Department of Economics
Vanderbilt University
VU Station B #351819
2301 Vanderbilt Place
Nashville, TN 37235-1819
Tel: 615/343-2466
E-Mail: peter.l.rousseau@vanderbilt.edu
AB  - Growth of technological variety offers more scope for the division of labor.  And when a division of labor requires some specific training, the technological specificity of human capital grows and, with it, probably the firm specificity of that capital. We build a simple model that captures this observation. The model implies that a rising specialization of human and physical capital raises the rents in the average match between a firm and its human and physical capital. We document that in the last 40 years the firm's share of those rents has also grown, and we use the model to explain why this shift may have taken place.
ER  -