This paper provides new evidence on the workplace skills most relevant in the transition toward environmentally sustainable economies. Using a novel datadriven methodology, we identify two main sets of green skills, namely, engineering skills for the design and production of technology, and managerial skills for implementing and monitoring environmental organizational practices. Exploiting exogenous geographical variation in regulatory stringency, we also evaluate the effect of environmental regulation on the demand of green skills for a panel of US metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas over the period 2006-14. The main finding is that while these changes in environmental regulation have no impact on overall employment, they create significant, if modest, gaps in the demand for some green skills, especially those related to technical and engineering work tasks.
Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) are intermediary firms which specialize in knowledge screening, assessment and evaluation, and trade professional consultancy services. The remarkable rise of this broad class of activities is perceived by many as the natural by-product of modern knowledge economies within which increasing specialisation induces the need for professional agents in the markets for external knowledge. This paper addresses critically a conceptual flaw in the specialised literature which portrays KIBS as a homogeneous group of activities. Using official data on occupational information in the United States we observe and analyse high variety across KIBS sectors' occupational structures and skill requirements.
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