Journal of Evolutionary Economics

, Volume 23, Issue 2, pp 477–501 | Cite as

The evolving knowledge base of professional service sectors

Regular Article
First Online:

Abstract

The objective of the paper is to analyse the degree of heterogeneity across Professional Service sectors. While previous research concentrates on the criteria of industrial classification of these sectors, we propose an empirical analysis of employment structures and the associated skill bases. By shifting the focus from sectoral ‘boundaries’ to sectoral ‘structures’ we are able to appreciate under a novel perspective the emergence and evolution of specialization patterns.

Keywords

Professional service sectors Skill intensity Cross-sectoral variety 

JEL Classification

O33 J24 L84 
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Notes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the administrators of the National Center for O*NET Development for making data available. We thank participants at the 6th Iberian International Business Conference (Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain) and at the Stan Metcalfe Festschrift (University of Manchester, England) for comments on a preliminary version of this manuscript. The remarks by Stan Metcalfe, Peter Allen, Cristiano Antonelli, Franco Malerba, Franco Montobbio, Pier Paolo Saviotti and Ulrich Witt are gratefully acknowledged. D. Consoli acknowledges financial support from the European Community (FP7-PEOPLE-IEF-2008-235278). The usual caveats apply.

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag 2012

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.INGENIO (CSIC-UPV)ValenciaSpain
  2. 2.Faculty of Social SciencesUniversity of Castilla La-ManchaCuencaSpain

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