Imported capital goods, which embody skill-complementary technologies, can increase the supply of skills in developing countries. Focusing on China and using a shift-share design, we show that city-level capital goods import growth increases the local skill share and that both skill acquisition...

We argue that the narrative of variety-induced gains from trade in differentiated goods needs revision. If producing differentiated varieties of a good requires differentiated skills and if the work force is heterogeneous in these skills, then firms are likely to have monopsony power. We show...

We develop a model that combines monopolistic competition on goods markets with skill-type heterogeneity on the labor market to analyze the effects of trade and migration on welfare and inequality. Skill-type heterogeneity and partial specificity to firms' endogenously chosen skill requirements...

We study the effects of a voluntary skill certification scheme in an online freelancing labour market. We show that obtaining skill certificates increases freelancers' earnings. This effect is not driven by increased freelancer productivity but by decreased employer uncertainty. The increase in...

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...

Labor market institutions, via their effect on the wage structure, affect the investment decisions of firms in labor markets with frictions. This observation helps explain rising wage inequality in the US, but a relatively stable wage structure in Europe in the 1980s. These different trends are...

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...

We study the role of firm heterogeneity and imperfect competition for global production networks and the gains from trade. We develop a quantifiable trade model with two-sided firm heterogeneity, matching frictions, and oligopolistic competition upstream. More productive buyers endogenously...

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...

This paper studies the implications for wage inequality of two distinct forms of globalisation, namely trade and foreign direct investment. I use German linked employer-employee data to (1) jointly estimate the exporter and the multinational wage premium and (2) to further distinguish between...