Welfare benefits in the Nordic countries are often tied to employment. We argue that this is one of the factors behind the success of the Nordic model, where a comprehensive welfare state is associated with high employment. In a general equilibrium setting, the underlining mechanism works...

We examine the labor market performance of return migrants using the Hungarian Household Panel Survey. Two distinct selection issues are considered in the estimation of the earnings equation. The result that there is a ?premium? to work experience abroad for women is robust across models we...

We study the relationship between early life health and adult earnings using a unique dataset that covers almost the entire population of Swedish males born between 1950 and 1970. The health information is obtained from medical examinations during the mandatory military enlistment tests at age...

This paper evaluates the long-term effects of class size in primary school. We use rich administrative data from Sweden and exploit variation in class size created by a maximum class size rule. Smaller classes in the last three years of primary school (age 10 to 13) are not only beneficial for...

Using the underexplored, sizeable and long Lifetime Labour Market Database (LLMDB) we estimated the immigrant-native earnings gap across the entire earnings distribution, across continents of nationality and across cohorts of arrival in the UK between 1978 and 2006. We exploited the longitudinal...

We examine the relationship between disability, job mismatch, earnings and job satisfaction, using panel estimation on data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey (2001-2008). While we do not find any relationship between work-limiting disability and...

This paper investigates earnings differentials between immigrants and natives. We focus on returns and on the (imperfect) international transferability of human capital. Data are drawn from the 2009 Italian Labour Force Survey (LFS). We show that returns to human capital are considerably lower...

Many countries use centralized exit exams as a governance devise of the school system. While abundant evidence suggests positive effects of central exams on achievement tests, previous research on university-bound students shows no effects on subsequent earnings. We suggest that labor-market...

This article uses micro-data from the Spanish National Immigrant Survey to investigate the impact of Spanish language proficiency on immigrants' earnings. The results, based on Instrumental Variables (IV), point to a substantial earnings return to Spanish proficiency, of approximately 27%. This...

Compared to other immigrants to the United States, recent Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union have achieved high levels of English language proficiency and earnings. They experience disadvantages in both dimensions at arrival, but because of steeper improvements with duration in the...