The main questions addressed in this paper are: First, how did labour markets in the Visegrad countries react to the breakdown of a command economy and the transformation to a market economy? Second, which way ahead is likely, or to put it differently, what should be done now to improve...

Until the early decades of the 20th century, women spent more than 60% of their prime-age years either pregnant or nursing. Since then, the introduction of infant formula reduced women's comparative advantage in infant care, by providing an effective breast milk substitute. In addition, improved...

We survey the recent literature on the effects of active labour market policies on individual labour market outcomes like employment and income, for adult female individuals without work in European countries. We consider skill-training programs, monitoring and sanctions, job search assistance,...

The Swedish adult education program known as the Knowledge Lift (1997--2002) was unprecedented in its size and scope, aiming to raise the skill level of large numbers of low-skill workers. This paper evaluates the potential effects of this program on aggregate labour market outcomes. This is...

The purpose of this Paper is to investigate wage structures of professional workers in the Israeli labour market, using data from the most recent 1995 Census and correcting for selectivity at the stage of entrance into the occupation. The sample of professionals is decomposed into several...

We study long-run trends in aggregate market hours of work and shifts across economic sectors within the context of balanced aggregate growth. We show that a model of many goods and uneven TFP growth in market and home production can rationalize the observed falling or U-shaped aggregate hours...

OECD countries faced largely divergent employment rates during the last decades. But the whole bulk of the cross-national and cross-temporal heterogeneity relies on specific demographic groups: prime-age women and younger and older individuals. This paper argues that family labour supply...

This study examines the extent, duration and timing of employment breaks amongst a large representative sample of Jewish workers in Israel over the 13-year time period, 1983-95. Work histories are constructed from a new joint database, unique in Israel, which was derived from a linkage of 1995...

This paper examines differences in the labour supply of women of different religions in Israel. We estimate religious differentials in the effect of husband’s income, number of children, education, and age on married women’s labour supply. It is suggested that labour supply patterns of wives...

In this Paper, we analyse the recent patterns of occupational segregation by gender in the EU countries vis-á-vis the US. Given the lack of long time-series data on homogeneous LFS data about occupations and educational attainments for male and female workers in EU countries, we use a single...