We analyse the impact of retraining for the unemployed on future labour market success, and estimate effects separately for different target occupations. We use German registry data and apply statistical matching methods. The results show that on average, after a period with strong lock-in...

We show that more human capital improves incentives in a standard optimal taxation problem: common assumptions about preferences and technology imply that the disutility of labor decreases less strongly in unobserved ability if agents have more human capital. Human capital thus reduces the...

Using data from social security records on Spanish males, we investigate the wage effects of working under a fixed-term contract. In a first step, we provide fixed-effects estimates of the wage effect of working under a fixed-term contract for low-skilled, medium-skilled, and high-skilled men...

The new training literature suggests that in a monopsonistic market employers will not only pay for firm-specific training but also for general training if the risk of poaching is limited. This implies that training participation should decrease when competition for employees is higher among...

Does granting citizenship at birth help immigrant children to integrate in the host country's educational system and thus, to promote their educational success? Our identification strategy is based on a reform of the German naturalization law in 2000. We exploit this natural experiment and use a...

The longer an agent is employed in a job, the more the principal will have learned about his ability through the history of performance. With implicit incentives, influence perceptions and effort incentives decrease over time. Rotating agents to a different job deletes learning effects about...

This paper examines the role of the sociocultural background of students as measured by both religious denomination and political attitudes towards gender equality and science-related issues in their home environment for choosing STEM fields in university. Our empirical estimates are based on a...

Over the last decades, the United States and other developed countries have experienced profound job polarization whereby employment in high-skill and low-skill occupations increased at the expense of employment in middle-skill occupations. This paper examines the wage effects of job...

In the present paper I provide novel evidence on the formation of the gender pay gap with respect to directly measured job task contents. Using high-quality administrative employment data for Germany, and augmenting these by individual-level task information, I provide detailed evidence on the...

This paper uses a rich dataset derived from a three-year survey to gain insights about the informational background of University applicants. We analyze the extent to which students expectations of their starting and future salary depend on different characteristics. More precisely, the paper...