Several recent studies based on 'exogenous' sources of variation in education outcomes show Instrumental Variables (IV) estimates of returns to schooling that are substantially higher than the corresponding Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimates. Card (1995a) suggests that these results can be...

Recent years have seen a major structural break in trade relations between West European countries and the former Eastern bloc. Austria experienced a disproportionately large bilateral trade creation with these countries. In this paper we take a closer look at the impact this trade growth has...

In this paper we look at the effects of immigration and trade with Eastern Europe on unemployment in Austria. Using individual data over the period 1989-92 of male blue-collar workers employed in the Austrian manufacturing sector, we decompose possible detrimental impacts in unemployment entry...

In this paper we analyse the relationship between unemployment and consumption. We study this relationship with panel data on households in five countries: Spain and Italy (the South), and Germany, Britain, and the US (the North). Our empirical results indicate that an increase in the duration...

In this paper we investigate how fertility decisions respond to unexpected career interruptions which occur as a consequence of job displacement. Using an event study approach we compare the birth rates of displaced women with those of women unaffected by job loss after establishing the...

This Paper evaluates an Austrian manpower training programme, which is highly innovative in its content and financing - and could therefore serve as a role model for other programmes. In the late 1980s privatization and downsizing of nationalized steel firms have led to large-scale redundancies....

Decomposing wages into worker and firm wage components, we find that firm-fixed components (firm rents) are sizeable parts of workers' wages. If workers can only imperfectly observe the extent of firm rents in their wages, they might be mislead about the overall wage distribution. Such...

Previous estimates of the effect of unemployment on crime commonly omit determinants of criminal behavior that vary with the business cycle, creating correlation between unemployment rates and the residuals in aggregate crime regressions. In this paper, we employ several strategies that attempt...