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The changing character of jobs is a perennial question in the social sciences. With regard to the requirements associated with employment, i.e. the qualities of the tasks that are to be carried out, various scholars have at different times argued for a) a successive demeaning of jobs, b) a continuous increase in the complexity of jobs, and c) a growing dualization of jobs. Despite the attention garnered by these contrasting visions, evidence on the actual development of skill requirements is surprisingly scant.

Testing the causality of our claims has become more important over the recent years. But how to do so with a cross-section of observational data? One potential solution is a regression discontinuity design: RDD exploits a cutoff on a linear variable after which a treatment is assigned. An example might be a special training program that pupils who surpass a certain math grade are assigned to. The intuition is that values close to the cutoff are random, i.e. whether one just passes the cutoff or just misses to pass is not systematic.