Increasingly policy makers are focusing on the importance of skills and lifelong learning. The reason for this is that workers with sufficient and up-to-date skills are more productive and have more potential to remain employed. However, the processes that influence skill obsolescence, have...

This paper addresses the long run consequences of skills mismatches generated by innovation for those workers who are not involved in the process of innovation. Skills mismatches are interpreted as indicators of skills obsolescence. We impose the need of specific skills for successful...

This paper examines the impact on the experience-earnings profile of a worker's ageing and of the human capital depreciation due to the obsolescence of schooling in Switzerland. To disentangle the vintage effect from the age effect, we follow the methodological idea proposed by Neuman and Weiss...

In this chapter we review the economic literature on the various causes of skills obsolescence and the ways in which skills obsolescence has been modelled or estimated. Most of the literature focuses on skills obsolescence due to atrophy and worker displacements. Skills obsolescence may,...

In the 15 years since the depreciation rules were calculated to approximate economic depreciation for structures and equipment, that neutrality (using a constant set of economic depreciation estimates) has been somewhat undermined by a relatively more favorable treatment of equipment due to...

The paper analyses skills obsolescence during transition to the market economy, using individual wage data from Hungary, 1986–1999. The link between workers' age composition and firms' productivity is also examined using firm-level information. Transition started with the collapse of demand...

Technological progress renders various skills obsolete, however, the rate of skill obsolescence will vary according to the worker's human capital investments. Workers heavily invested in general skills, such as education, will not suffer high rates of obsolescence, while less-educated workers...