Abstract

Typically, the economic theory of professions has been concerned with the analysis of the economic rationality of the mechanisms regulating professional markets (e.g. State authorizations, barriers to entry, self-regulation through professional associations) and with their effects on the social welfare. Both the process through which an occupation acquires the status of profession and the effect of this professionalization process on the allocation of working talent and on the economic growth has been neglected. The aim of this paper is to contribute to fill this lacuna. In particular, we present a neo-Schumpeterian growth model in which the intermediate good is a professional service, and the acquisition of the professional status is obtained through a rent-seeking game. Once established as a profession, the professional "élite" initiates a process of social status accumulation that affects the rewards of different occupations and, consequently, the pace of technological change.