Compute pairwise distances between professions based on skill profiles

Builds a profession x skill incidence matrix from a data.table of profession-skill associations. Applies a Balassa-type filter so that only cells where the observed count exceeds the expected count are retained (revealed comparative advantage). The transposed matrix is then passed to stats::dist().

Usage

compute_profession_distance(competenze, method = "binary", filter_rca = TRUE)

Arguments

competenze

A data.table with at least columns cod_3 (profession code) and escoskill_level_3 (skill label).

method

Character, distance method passed to stats::dist(). Default: "binary". Other common options: "euclidean", "canberra", "maximum", "minkowski".

filter_rca

Logical, whether to zero out cells where the observed count is below the expected count (Balassa filter). Default: TRUE.

Value

A dist object with pairwise distances between professions.