Human Capital and the Lifecycle of Firms

How much do worker characteristics affect the performance of firms? Popular commentary agrees with economic intuition that having the right types of human capital at the right time can matter a great deal. Yet, there is little known about whether the correct match of skills and abilities between workers and firms matter more at certain stages in the lifecycle of a firm. We propose to address this question using a rich employee-employer linked dataset together with new measures of worker skill, ability and human capital and their contribution to firm outcomes.