In 1997 GDP per capita in East Germany was 57% of that of West Germany, wage rates were 75% of western levels, and the unemployment rate was at least double the western rate of 7.8%. One would expect that if capital flows and trade in goods failed to bring convergence, labor flows would respond,...

Using Polish Labour Force Survey data, we examine whether competition for labour has induced individual pay to depend on outside options, availability and quality of jobs. Exploiting the lack of inter-regional job and worker flows we estimate the elasticity of individual pay, amongst a rich set...

On their intensive margins, firms in the British engineering industry adjusted to the severe falls in demand during the 1930s Depression by cutting hours of work. This provided an important means of reducing labour input and marginal labour costs, through movements from overtime to short-time...

Several firm-related aspects of employee productivity are analyzed using GSOEP data. The basic premise is that, as a consequence of frustration, overeducated employees are less productive than their correctly allocated colleagues. However, the results obtained in the present study contradict the...

This paper analyses the effects of expected earnings and local markets conditions on the behaviour of young adults with high school diplomas. Decisions to either remain in the parental home or form a new household are modelled jointly with those of either gaining work experience or investing in...

Public employment grew surprisingly fast in Russia during the 1990s, at a time when total employment was falling. Most of this growth occurred in the country's 89 regions, and rates varied among them. This paper seeks to explain this variation. Using panel data for 78 regions over 1992-1998 we...

In response to increased international policy attention to youth unemployment this study investigates post-secondary school transitions of school leavers. Multinomial logit models are estimated for male and female German youth. The models control for individual, parent, and household...

We evaluate the determinants of matching efficiency changes through a stochastic Cobb- Douglas production frontier model extended to allow the efficiency coefficient to depend on variables meant to capture workers and firms characteristics. We apply this methodology to examine regional...

Considerable research attention has been devoted to the question of whether and to what extent changes in welfare policy legislated in the 1990s might have deterred immigrant participation in welfare programs, although only post-1996 immigrants were explicitly targeted by most of the changes....