We develop novel measures of early-career skills that are more detailed, comprehensive, and labor-market-relevant than existing skill proxies. We exploit that skill requirements of apprenticeships in Germany are codified in state-approved, nationally standardized apprenticeship plans. These...

We document a steady decline in low-skilled immigration that began with the onset of the Great Recession in 2007, which was associated with labor shortages in low-skilled service occupations and a decline in the skill premium. Falling returns to high-skilled jobs coincided with a decline in the...

In this paper, we show that the wage assimilation of immigrants is the result of the intricate interplay between individual skill accumulation and dynamic equilibrium effects in the labor market. When immigrants and natives are imperfect substitutes, increasing immigrant inflows widen the wage...

In this paper we study how labor market duality affects human capital accumulation and wage trajectories of young workers. Using rich administrative data for Spain, we follow workers since their entry into the labor market to measure experience accumulated under different contractual...

The multitude of tasks performed in the labor market requires skills in many dimensions. Traditionally, human capital has been proxied primarily by educational attainment. However, an expanding body of literature highlights the importance of various skill dimensions for success in the labor...

This paper develops a dynamic general equilibrium model to highlight the role of human capital accumulation of agents differentiated by skill type in the joint determination of social mobility and the skill premium. We first show that our model captures the empirical co-movement of the skill...

The objective of this paper is to construct and quantitatively assess an equilibrium search model with on-the-job search and general human capital accumulation. In the model workers enter the labour market with different abilities and firms differ in their productivities. Wages are dispersed...

Feenstra and Hanson (1997) have argued in the context of the North American Free Trade Agreement that US outsourcing to Mexico leads to an increase in the skill premium in both the US and Mexico. In this paper we show on the example of Austria and Poland that with the new international division...

The assumption that all migrations are permanent, which pervaded the early microdata-based research on immigrant career profiles, is not supported by the empirical evidence. Rather, many - if not most - migrations appear to be temporary. In this paper, therefore, we illustrate the estimation...

We develop a new framework for the analysis of the impact of trade liberalization on the wage structure. Our model focuses on the decision of workers to accumulate firm-specific skills, by on-the-job training, knowing that this means their future wages will have to be negotiated, and that the...