Education is the main resource of young people entering the labour market for securing employment, in competing for adequate employment contracts and to fulfill their occupational aspirations. As European countries differ widely in the institutional structure of their education and training...

Self-employment still forms an important element in the social structure of modern societies. However, the group of the self-employed has experienced an enormous economic and social change. After a long term decline until the beginning of the 1970s in almost all industrialised countries,...

The paper addresses the issue of the driving forces behind recent changes in labour market entry outcomes in Europe. Based on data for 12 European countries from the 1988-1997 European Community Labour Force Survey, the empirical analyses estimate panel data models to assess the effects of...

During the last decades most industrialised countries have experienced a rapid expansion of tertiary education enrolments. The sector of tertiary education became more differentiated through the creation of many different subjects, fields and curricula of study. At the same time, men and women...

The nature of the linkage of education and training systems to the labour market is often claimed to crucially affect labour market integration in modern economies. More specifically, most current comparative research assumes a more strongly qualification-based allocation in training systems...

The transition from initial education to work has received a great amount of attention, but hardly any research treats this process holistically. This paper focuses on the serial succession of statuses instead of on single events in the early years after leaving full-time education. As...

The paper proposes an empirical examination of the consequences of educational expansion and reform in four European countries in terms of school-leavers' labour market chances. The empirical analyses focus on the returns to higher education on the one side and vocational qualification as...