In line with earlier literature, I document a U-shaped relationship between age and wage dispersion in the U.S.. To explain this outcome, I consider a life-cycle model of labor market search with strategic wage bargaining, heterogeneous firm-worker matches, and endogenous search effort. Three...

This paper considers training, mobility decisions and wages together to test for the specificity of human capital contained in continuing training courses. We empirically analyse the relationship between training, mobility and wages in two ways. First, we examine the correlation between training...

Many scholars argue that the delegation of decision rights to independent institutions promotes trust and specific investments. We test this conjecture with variations of the trust game in which the back transfer decision is delegated to a third party. A randomly chosen third party with a fixed...

A higher unemployment compensation increases the incentive to shirk in efficiency wage models. If there is a stronger dependence of unemployment benefits on current earnings, these incentives will be reduced. An unemployment insurance with earnings-related benefits is thus characterised by...

Various taxes influence wage and employment outcomes in efficiency wage models. These findings are extended by incorporating more comprehensive tax functions, additional tax parameters, union-firm wage bargaining, and balanced budget restrictions. Moreover, the importance of different effort...

This paper investigates the effects of using dismissal taxes to finance unemployment benefits. We compare dismissal and employment taxes in a model with search frictions. Employment taxes give rise to externalities because firms do not take into account the effects their dismissal decisions have...

The current analysis introduces human capital investments which - as all other investment projects - must be carried out given ex-ante uncertain returns. This return uncertainty reflects that particular ex-post ability realizations may or may not induce the possibility to engage in profitable...

In this paper we ague that any meaningful bibliometric evaluation of researchers needs to take into account that research productivity follows distinct life cycles. Using an encompassing data set portraying the research behavior of German academic economists, we first show that research...

Employment protection affects labour market outcomes and hence the incentive to acquire skills. Using a matching model with two education levels in which workers decide ex-ante on their skill formation, it is shown that employment protection can raise the fraction of skilled workers. This will...

In the discussion about employment protection, little attention has been given to judicial mistakes. In most countries, only in the case of dismissals due to economic reasons, the employee is entitled to a severance payment. Given judicial mistakes when reviewing a dismissal, shirkers might...