The consumer’s choice over a bundle of products depends on the observable and unobservable characteristics of the product and the consumer. The choice is made over the basis of maximizing utility subject to their income restrictions and, at the same time, firms make product differentiation...

We use information gathered from 122 studies on the effects of high school degrees on wages in different countries worldwide to carry out a meta-analysis that shows high school degrees have a statistically significant effect on wages of nearly 8%. This effect varies either when the review is...

As a result of the duality of cost and distance functions the efficiency of cost-minimizing behaviour can be compared to shadow-prizing behaviour, and conversely. In this framework we outline the form that dual efficiency measures, Muro (1982), Muro and Vera (1983), adopt for homothetic and...

The objective of this paper is to describe a process through which the original information of an administrative data source (the Spanish Continuous Work History Sample) can be organised in such a way as to permit the accurate study of work histories. It presents a comparison of the information...

This paper provides several definitions of efficiency measures in the price space. Economic and scale aspects of inefficiency are considered to give empirical content to the measurement of efficiency when the production technology is described by cost functions models. It shows, in the...

This paper discusses the effect of the minimum wage level on the decision to join the informal job sector. We estimate a pseudo panel of the engagement in the informal sector using an IV-probit. The findings show that an increase in the minimum wage level leads to a substitution effect between...

Studying wage dispersion, many researchers have found that the skill premium (the ratio of skilled workers’ wages to unskilled ones) has increased after 1979 in many developed countries, when there was a very sharp increase in the supply of skilled workers. The recent consensus is that...

This article estimates the impact of industrial concentration on market power and cost and then links the ensuing welfare changes to market structure characteristics using a sample of 232 U.S. manufacturing industries. Empirical results indicate that further increases in concentration would...

This piece of work analyses the profile of poverty amongst youth in Spain from a multidimensional perspective. This approach entails the estimation of poverty risks, material deprivation indicators and an education exclusion indicator. Material deprivation indicators refer to deficiencies in...

The passing of the Law 39/2006 has given to Spanish insurance companies the chance of offering products that cover the expenses associated to the risk of dependence. However, due to the lack of reliable statistic information about dependent population, it is extremely difficult to evaluate not...