This paper assesses whether short-lived jobs (lasting one quarter or less and involuntarily ending in unemployment) are stepping stones to long-lasting jobs (enduring one year or more) for Belgian long-term unemployed school-leavers. We proceed in two steps. First, we estimate labour market...

We study the impact of graduating in a recession in Flanders (Belgium), i.e. in a rigid labor market. In the presence of a high minimum wage, a typical recession hardly influences the hourly wage of low educated men, but reduces working time and earnings by about 4.5% up to twelve years after...

In this model of education, where individuals are exposed both to educational risk and to wage risk within the skilled sector, successful graduation depends both on individual effort to study and on public resources. We show that insuring the present risks is a dichotomic task: Wage risk is...

As the time of leaving school determines the level of academic achievement this timing decision is central for the human capital investment decision. Real option theory offers a new perspective of the human capital investment decision under uncertainty and irreversibility. Unlike other...

We empirically analyze sub-national migration of graduates in Germany and its determinants. Based on a longitudinal, representative survey-based dataset of students who graduated in the academic year 2004/2005, we observe the transition to the labor market and previous and subsequent migration...

This paper examines the impacts of the Michigan Merit Curriculum (MMC), a statewide college-preparatory curriculum that applies to the high school graduating class of 2008 and later. We use a student, longitudinal database for all public school students in Michigan for the main analyses, and...

The mobility of labor reduces national incentives to invest in internationally applicable education. The European Union could overcome this by allowing member states to institute graduate taxes or income-contingent loans, collected also from migrants. This paper presents calculations on how a...

We analyse empirically the effects of urbanization on Italian college graduates’ work possibilities as entrepreneurs three years after graduation. We find that doubling the province of work's population density reduces the chances of being an entrepreneur by 2-3 percentage points. This result...

Most public colleges and universities rely heavily on state financial support. As state budgets have tightened in recent decades, appropriations for higher education have declined substantially. Despite concerns expressed by policymakers and scholars that the declines in state support have...

Liste di mobilità (LM) is an Italian labour market programme targeted to dismissed workers. There is a "passive" component granting monetary benefits to employees dismissed by firms larger than 15 employees, and an "active" component providing an employment subsidy to any firm hiring workers...