A growing empirical literature attributes much of the productivity advantages of large, "superstar" firms to their adoption of best practice management techniques that allow them to better identify and use talented workers. The reasons for the incomplete adoption of these "structured management...

Using rich linked employer-employee data for (West) Germany between 1996 and 2014, we analyze the most important drivers of the recent rise in German wage dispersion and pin down the relative contribution of plant and worker characteristics. Moreover, we separately investigate the drivers of...

We analyze the dramatic decline of the employment share of unskilled labor in the West German economy, in particular its relation to the relatively rigid earnings structure. We find that the substitution elasticity between unskilled and skilled labor is rather low in most sectors of the economy....

In advanced countries in particular, the mental well-being of adolescents and young adults is gaining increased amount of attention. Yet little is known about lifetime labor market costs attributable to mental disorders nor the related heterogeneity by the age of onset of psychiatric conditions....

This paper presents new empirical evidence about the wage gap between union and nonunion workers in Brazil. In principle, due to the rules governing union organization/mobilization, no one should rationally expect such gap. However, as this paper reveals, there is empirical evidence of its...

I study the life-cycle pattern of part-time employment and its impact on wage growth in female careers. I show that the part-time wage penalty consists of two essential components: i) a penalty for promotions and ii) a within-career-level wage penalty. Using dynamic structural modeling, I...