Skill-biased technical change is usually interpreted in terms of the efficiency parameters ofskilled and unskilled labor. This implies that the relative productivity of skilled workerschanges proportionally in all tasks. In contrast, we argue that technical changes also affectthe curvature of...

Skill shortages are often portrayed as a major problem for the economies of many countriesincluding the Australian economy. Yet, there is surprisingly little evidence about theirprevalence, causes and consequences. This paper attempts to improve our understandingabout these issues by using...

We present a general model of child labor that incorporates the various componentspresented in the literature as explanations for its existence. Our proposal is to mitigate thephenomenon by encouraging temporary emigration...

Standard search models are unreliable for structural inference of the underlying sources ofwage inequality because they are inconsistent with observed residual wage dispersion. Weaddress this issue by modeling skill development and duration dependence in unemploymentbenefits in a random on the...

This paper provides an introduction and overview of my research on the Economics of Language. The approach is that language skills among immigrants and native-born linguistic minorities are a form of human capital. There are costs and benefits associated with this characteristic embodied in the...

We use HILDA data from 2001 - 2006 to analyse the source of the gender wage gap across public- and private-sector wage distributions in Australia. We are particularly interested in the role of gender segregation within sector-specific occupations in explaining relative wages. We find that,...

With the use of comparable data from seven West African capitals, we attempt to assess the rationale behind development policies targeting high rates of school enrolment through the prism of allocation of labour and returns to skills across the formal and informal sectors...

For the first time it has been made possible to merge a German and a Swiss firm-level data set that include detailed information about costs and benefits of apprenticeship training. Previous analyses based only on aggregate data showed that the net costs of training apprentices are substantial...

This paper experimentally investigates the impact of different pay and relative performance information policies on employee effort. We explore three information policies: No feedback about relative performance, feedback given halfway through the production period, and continuously updated...

Persistent productivity gains to rural-urban migrants have been documented by a number ofresearchers. One interpretation of this result is that individuals learn higher value skills incities than they would have learned in less dense areas. Another explanation for this result,however, is that...