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Record W4416684357 · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2509.00516

Worker Quality, Matching and Productivity Slowdown

2025· preprint· en· W4416684357 on OpenAlexaboutno aff
Shiwen Cao, Shutao Cao

Bibliographic record

VenueArXiv.org · 2025
Typepreprint
Languageen
FieldEconomics, Econometrics and Finance
TopicLabor market dynamics and wage inequality
Canadian institutionsnot available
Fundersnot available
KeywordsSlowdownTotal factor productivityProductivityMatching (statistics)Quality (philosophy)Estimation

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Measured aggregate productivity and the income share of top earners are strongly and positively correlated in the Canadian data. Productivity slowdown since the early 2000s was accompanied with a flattening income share of top earners. Motivated by these facts, we study the role of firms' top-paid workers and worker matching in accounting for the slowdown of measured total factor productivity. We first estimate total factor productivity for Canadian firms in the period of 2003-2015, taking into account the assortative matching between top workers and non-top workers. Measured total factor productivity consists of the Hicks-neutral technology and the quality of top workers. Our estimation suggests that measured aggregate total factor productivity declined from 2003 to 2015, in line with that estimated by the statistical agency. The decline of measured productivity is entirely accounted for by the declining quality of top workers, while the Hicks-neutral technology improved. Both the within-firm changes and the cross-firm reallocation of top-worker quality are important in contributing to the decline of overall top-worker quality. We also discuss possible causes of declines in the quality of top workers, e.g., the emigration of top talents as studied in recent literature.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.003
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.012
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.882
Threshold uncertainty score0.237

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0030.012
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.001
Bibliometrics0.0020.004
Science and technology studies0.0010.001
Scholarly communication0.0020.001
Open science0.0010.001
Research integrity0.0010.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0040.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.067
GPT teacher head0.285
Teacher spread0.218 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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Same venueArXiv.org→Same topicLabor market dynamics and wage inequality→French-language works237,207→