The European Social Survey data are used to analyze informal employment at the main jobin 30 countries. Overall, informality decreases from South to West to East to North. However,dependent work without contract is more prevalent in Eastern Europe than in the West,except for Ireland, the UK and...

Denmark’s registry data provide accurate and complete career history data along withdetailed personal characteristics (e.g., education, gender, work experience, tenure andothers) for the population of Danish workers longitudinally. By using such data from 1992 to2002, we provide rigorous...

In this paper we provide an overview of China’s human capital strategy and educationalachievements over the last two decades. While every one acknowledges China as aneconomic superpower, very few are aware of or realize China’s notable achievements ineducation as well as its...

We develop entrepreneurship and institutional theory to explain variation in different types ofentrepreneurship across individuals and institutional contexts. Our framework generateshypotheses about the negative impact of higher levels of corruption, weaker property rightsand especially...

In contrast to the very large literature on skill-biased technical change among workers, thereis hardly any work on the importance of skills for the entrepreneurs who employ thoseworkers, and in particular on their evolution over time. This paper proposes a simple theory ofskill-biased change in...

We analyze empirically the effects of urban agglomeration on Italian college graduates’ workpossibilities as entrepreneurs three years after graduation. We find that each 100,000inhabitant-increase in the size of the individual’s province of work reduces the chances ofbeing an entrepreneur...

This paper uses firm level panel data of firm provided training to estimate its impact onproductivity and wages. To this end the strategy proposed by Ackerberg, Caves and Frazer(2006) for estimating production functions to control for the endogeneity of input factors andtraining is applied. The...

How valuable is education for entrepreneurs’ performance as compared to employees’?What might explain any differences? And does education affect peoples’ occupationalchoices accordingly? We answer these questions based on a large panel of US labor forceparticipants. We show that education...

We use a unique firm-level data set merging administrative information on average wagespaid by firms by skill level (blue collars and white collars), Population Census information onthe local stock of human capital available to firms and survey information on firmcharacteristics to investigate...

We combine two empirical observations in a general equilibrium occupational choice model.The first is that entrepreneurs have more control than employees over the employment ofand accruals from assets, such as human capital. The second observation is thatentrepreneurs enjoy higher returns to...