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Journal of Financial Economics Vol. 164 2025

JAQ of all trades: Job mismatch, firm productivity and managerial quality

Luca Coraggio1,2; Marco Pagano3,1,2,4; Annalisa Scognamiglio1,2,4; Joacim Tåg

1 Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance · 2 University of Naples Federico II · 3 Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance · 4 Research Institute of Industrial Economics

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Abstract

We develop a novel measure of job-worker allocation quality ( JAQ ) by exploiting employer-employee data with machine learning techniques. Based on our measure, the quality of job-worker matching correlates positively with individual labor earnings and firm productivity, as well as with market competition, non-family firm status, and employees’ human capital . Management plays a key role in job-worker matching: when managerial hirings and firings persistently raise management quality , the matching of rank-and-file workers to their jobs improves. JAQ can be constructed from any employer–employee data set including workers’ occupations, and used to explore research questions in corporate finance and organization economics.

DOI
10.1016/j.jfineco.2024.103992
Volume
164
Pages
103992
Language
en
Sources
openalex bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref

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