This paper analyzes whether technological change improves equality of labor market opportunities by decreasing returns to parental background. We find that in Germany during the 1990s, computerization improved the access to technologyadopting occupations for workers with low-educated parents,...

In this paper we develop and quantitatively assess a tractable equilibrium search model of the labour market to analyse the long-term wage costs of a job loss. In our framework, these costs occur due to losses in workers' human capital and firm specific compensation, interruptions to workers'...

This paper constructs and quantitatively assesses an equilibrium search model with on-the- job search and general human capital accumulation. In the model workers differ in their innate abilities and firms in their productivities. Wages are dispersed because of search frictions and workers'...

This paper studies the long-term consequences on firms and workers of the credit crunch triggered by the 2007-2008 global financial crisis. Relying on a unique matched bank-employer-employee administrative dataset, we construct a firm-specific credit supply shock and examine firms’ and...

This paper explores inequalities in IQ and economic preferences between children from high and low socio-economic status (SES) families. We document that children from high SES families are more intelligent, patient and altruistic, as well as less risk-seeking. To understand the underlying...

We investigate the relationship between child socio-emotional skills and labour market outcomes using longitudinal data from the 1970 British Cohort Study. We perform a novel factor analysis of child skills and capture four latent dimensions, representing "attention", "conduct", "emotional", and...

The paper analyses the applicability of vocational training and the earnings of apprentices using survey data from West Germany in 1979, 1985/86 and 1991/92. The applicability has decreased remarkably between 1979 and 1991/92. The objective of the analysis is a survey-data-based assessment of...

In this paper we study the separate effects of unemployment and job displace- ment on fertility in a sample of white collar women in Austria. Using an instru- mental variables approach we show that unemployment incidence as such has no negative effect on fertility decisions, but the very fact of...

Although early human capital theory recognized the relevance of workers' experience, its focus was on education and formal training. Recent studies find that much of the performance of newly hired workers is driven by learning by doing or learning from peers or supervisors in the workplace....