Involuntary job loss in administrative data is commonly identified by focusing on mass-layoffs or plant closures. However, such events usually do not happen without prior knowledge, which potentially leads to selection in the labor turnover of distressed firms. We find that workers separating...

The central vs. local nature of high-school exit exam systems can have important repercussions on the labor market. By increasing the informational content of grades, central exams may improve the sorting of students by productivity. To test this, we exploit the unique German setting where...

As skills of labor-market entrants are usually not directly observed by employers, individuals acquire skill signals. To study which signals are valued by employers, we simultaneously and independently randomize a broad range of skill signals on pairs of resumes of fictitious applicants among...