This research suggests that a Darwinian evolution of entrepreneurial spirit played asignificant role in the process of economic development and the dynamics of inequality withinand across societies. The study argues that entrepreneurial spirit evolved non-monotonicallyin the course of human...

This paper contributes to the already vast literature on demography-induced internationalcapital flows by examining the role of labor market imperfections and institutions. We setup atwo-country overlapping generations model with search unemployment, which we calibrateon EU15 and US data. Labor...

Theory predicts that mandated employment protections may reduce productivity by distortingproduction choices. Firms facing (non-Coasean) worker dismissal costs will curtail hiringbelow efficient levels and retain unproductive workers, both of which should affectproductivity. These theoretical...

During the 1980s and 1990s, the Netherlands experienced a strong increase in the labourforce participation of women. This study investigates the increase of participation over thesuccessive generations of women, and produces an educated guess for future participation.For this purpose, we...

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 addresses the question to which extent the complementarity between educationand training can be attributed to differences in observable characteristics, i.e. to individual,job and firm specific characteristics. The novelty of this paper is to analyze previouslyunconsidered...

As China exhibited unprecedented rapid economic growth ever since its reform andopenness, the development and sources of labor productivity has gradually come to theforefront. This paper studies the development and the source of labor productivity in 31Chinese provinces during the period of...

This paper analyses the impact of a change in Australia’s immigration policy, introduced inthe mid-1990s, on migrants’ probability of becoming entrepreneurs. The policy changeconsists of stricter entry requirements and restrictions to welfare entitlements. The resultsindicate that those who...

Using data on team assignment and weekly output for all weavers in an urban Chinese textilefirm between April 2003 and March 2004, this paper studies a) how randomly assignedteammates affect an individual worker’s behavior under a tournament-style incentive scheme,and b) how such effects...

This paper proposes that risk aversion encourages individuals to invest in balanced skillprofiles, making them more likely to become entrepreneurs. By not having taken this possiblelinkage into account, previous research has underestimated the impacts both of risk aversionand balanced skills on...