Becker meets Ricardo: A social and cognitive skills model of human capabilities

This paper studies an equilibrium model of social and cognitive skills interactions in school, work and marriage. The model uses a common team production function in each sector which integrates the complementarity concerns of Becker with the task assigment and comparative advantage concerns of Ricardo. The theory delivers full task specialization in the labor and education markets, incomplete task specialization in marriage. It rationalizes many to one matching, a common feature in labor markets. There is also occupational choice, matching by different skills in different sectors. Equilibrium is equivalent to the solution of an utilitarian social planner solving a linear programming problem.