Social interaction is an important vehicle of human capital acquisition and its efficiency decreases in social distance. In this paper I establish that these two premises, given the socio-cultural differences between ethnic groups, explain the puzzling evidence that (i) minorities typically earn...

Labor markets in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe underwent a dramatic transformation. Notably, this transformation took place within just a few years. Until the mid-2000s job opportunities were scarce and unemployment was high. But since then labor demand has picked up and...

This paper addresses the question of why high unemployment rates tend to persist even after their proximate causes have been reversed (e.g., after wages relative to productivity have fallen). We suggest that the longer people are unemployed, the greater is their cumulative likelihood of falling...

This paper investigates the substitutability of labor of selected ethnic groups in the US labor market. In the generalized Leontief framework, the analysis of US census-based data reveals that labor of non-White ethnic groups is complementary to that of White ethnic group. This finding supports...

The IAB employment subsample is now available for researchers in a third, anonymised version. Following the so-called basic file and the regional file from the IAB employment subsample, which encompassed the years 1975 to 1990, the actualized version of the basic file covers now the years 1975...

The paper studies opinions and attitudes towards immigrants and minorities and their interactions with other barriers to minorities’ economic integration. Specifically, we consider the minority experts’ own perceptions about these issues, the veracities and repercussions of unfavorable...

This study explores the hypothesis that high home-ownership damages the labor market. We show that rises in the home-ownership rate in a U.S. state are a precursor to eventual sharp rises in unemployment in that state. The elasticity exceeds unity: a doubling of the rate of home-ownership in a...

This paper tests whether amnesty, a provision of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), affected the labor market outcomes of the legalized population. Using the Legalized Population Survey (LPS) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) from 1987-1992, a...

Rapid education expansion and rising income inequality are two striking phenomena occurring in China during the transitional period. Using the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data collected in 1997 and 2006, this paper studies how education affects individual earnings during the...

This paper analyzes the dynamics of the youth labor market in Tunisia using unique labor force survey data from 2005 to 2007 that include a longitudinal component. It first shows that sustained economic growth will reduce youth unemployment over the next few years. Second, forecasts indicate...