Structural Change and Economic Dynamics 22 (2011) 30–40 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Structural Change and Economic Dynamics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/sced Strategic complementarities between innovative firms and skilled workers: The poverty trap and the policymaker’s intervention  Elvio Accinelli a , Edgar J. Sanchez Carrera b,∗ a Facultad de Economía, UASLP, Mexico b Department of Economics, University of Siena, Pzza San Francesco 7, 53100 Siena, Italy article info Article history: Received 2 July 2010 Received in revised form 13 November 2010 Accepted 15 November 2010 Available online 25 November 2010 JEL classification: C73 I21 L2 J3 J31 O31 Keywords: R&D firms Imitative behavior Skill-biased technical change Strategic complementarities abstract The economy under study is populated by two types of firms (innovative and not) and two types of workers (skilled and unskilled). The aim is to develop a model that confirms the existence of complementarities between innovative firms (R&D activities) and skilled workers (human capital) and traces corresponding optimal dynamics. Workers follow an imitative behavior to choose their action type (skilled or unskilled). As the share of innova- tive firms is large enough, then the share of skilled workers in equilibrium depends on the reviewing rate (of imitation) for those unskilled workers. The policy maker intervention is justified only for a certain time by reducing the threshold to reach the high-level equilib- rium, but once the economy is in a path for a high-level equilibrium such an intervention may stop. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Benhabib and Spiegel (1994), by focusing on the role of human capital in economic development, suggest that the specific role of the human capital (skilled workers) is to facilitate the adoption of technology from abroad and  We are grateful to two anonymous referees and the editor, Luigi Marengo, for many helpful suggestions and constructive comments. Many thanks to Costas Azariadis, Sam Bowles and Lionello Punzo for their helpful feedback to improve this research. We also thank the seminar participants of the XI JOLATE (Latin American meeting on economic theory). The usual disclaimer applies. ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 0550944123; fax: +39 0577 232661 E-mail addresses: elvio.accinell@eco.uaslp.mx (E. Accinelli), sanchezcarre@unisi.it, carrera.edgar@gmail.com (E.J. Sanchez Carrera). to create domestic technology (innovative firms). This evi- dence reinforces the importance of the matching among the skills and the technological profile. So, matching is fundamental to isolate one of the most important aspects of the acquisition of human capital and technology. For workers the crucial issue is the type of firms they inter- act with, while for firms it is the type of workers they hire. In the high-skill equilibrium, for example, workers expect that firms invest on technology, and then invest on hiring human capital. Given these workers’ expectations, firms find it optimal to invest on R&D activities, and therefore expectations are fulfilled in equilibrium. Several studies develop different models to prove that high-skilled labor and high-technological firms are com- plements in order to obtain a high-level equilibrium (particularly see, Acemoglu, 1997, 1998). Acemoglu (1997) 0954-349X/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.strueco.2010.11.004