We disaggregate the self-employed into incorporated and unincorporated to distinguish between "entrepreneurs" and other business owners. The incorporated self-employed have a distinct combination of cognitive, noncognitive, and family traits. Besides coming from higher-income families with...

Lab experiments are an increasingly valuable tool for understanding differences in how men and women are treated in the labour market. Dr Ghazala Azmat and Professor Barbara Petrongolo explore what has been learned about the extent to which differences in men and women's pay and employment...

The question of whether there is a connection between income and psychological well-being is a long-studied issue across the social, psychological, and behavioral sciences. Much research has found that richer people tend to be happier. However, relatively little attention has been paid to...

Optimal production decisions depend on local market characteristics. This paper develops a model to explain firm labor demand and firm density across regions. Firms vary in their technology to combine imperfectly substitutable worker types, and locate across regions with distinct distributions...

Women have, on average, been less well-paid than men throughout history. Prior to 1900, most economic historians see the gender wage gap as a reflection of men's greater strength and correspondingly higher productivity. This paper investigates the gender wage gap in cigar making around 1900....

Over the last two decades, earnings in the United States increased at the top and at the bottom of the wage distribution but not in the middle - the intensely debated middle class squeeze. At the same time there was a substantial decline of employment in middle-skill production and clerical...

This paper develops a theory of technology transfer when technology is embodied in human capital and learning requires on-the-job communication between managers and workers. Patterns of knowledge diffusion depend on where high knowledge managers work and how much time they allocate to training...

With the UK's cap on tuition fees due to rise to £9,000, Gill Wyness looks at the impact of past fee increases on young people's decisions to go to university.

Washington's 'revolving door' - the movement from government service into the lobbying industry- is regarded as a major concern for policy-making. We study how ex-government staffers benefit from the personal connections acquired during their public service. Lobbyists with experience in the...

We analyze the performance outcomes of National Hockey League (NHL) players over 18 seasons (1990-1991 to 2007-2008) as a function of the demographic conditions into which they were born. We have three main findings. First, larger birth cohorts substantially affect careers. A player born into a...