Using data from the German socio-economic panel this paper analyses the labour market entrance of former apprentices, as well as of university and full-time school graduates. There are three main findings. First, the retention rate of apprentices in their training firms is fairly low. Second,...

From the end of the second century C.E., Judaism enforced a religious norm requiring any Jewish father to educate his children. We present evidence supporting our thesis that this exogenous change in the religious and social norm had a major influence on Jewish economic and demographic history....

Bargaining theory suggests that married women who experience a relative improvement in their labour market position should experience a comparative gain within their marriage. However, if renegotiation possibilities are limited by institutional mechanisms that achieve long-term commitment, the...

Theories of taste-based discrimination predict that competitive pressures will drive discriminatory behaviour out of the market. Using detailed matched employer-employee data, we analyze how firm takeovers and product market competition are related to the gender composition of the firm’s...

The increase in female employment and participation rates is one of the most dramatic economic changes to have taken place during the last century. However, while the employment rate of married women more than doubled during the last fifty years, that of unmarried women remained almost constant....

Expanding credit access is a key ingredient of development strategies worldwide. Microfinance practitioners, policymakers, and donors have ambitious goals for expanding access, and seek efficient methods for implementing and evaluating expansion. There is less consensus on the role of consumer...

This paper analyzes the effects of top earnings tax rates on the international migration of top football players in Europe. We construct a panel data set of top earnings tax rates, football player careers, and club performances in the first leagues of 14 European countries since 1980. We...

This paper examines how the effort choices of workers within the same firm interact with each other. In contrast to the existing literature, we show that workers can affect the productivity of their co-workers based on income maximization considerations, rather than relying on behavioural...

Using survey data from 28 transition countries, we test for the complementarity and substitutability of market-relevant skills and institutions. We show that democracy and good governance complement market skills in transition economies. Under autocracy and weak governance institutions there is...

The purpose of this paper is to study the causes of unemployment empirically, using individual data and an approach which refines that of Meyer and Wise. Using the French 1997 Labour Survey data, we decompose non-employment of married women into three components: voluntary, classical (due to the...