This study examines the causal link between individuals' occupational knowledge, educational choices, and labor market outcomes. We proxy occupational knowledge with mandatory visits to job information centers (JICs) in Germany while still attending school. Exogenous variation in the location...

This paper studies the causal effect of student internship experience on labor market choices and wages later in life. We use variation in the introduction and abolishment of mandatory internships at German universities as an instrument for completing an internship while attending university....

This paper studies the causal effect of student internship experience in firms on earnings later in life. We use mandatory firm internships at German universities as an instrument for doing a firm internship while attending university. Employing longitudinal data from graduate surveys, we find...

This paper uses a novel matched employer-employee data set representing the formal sector in Bangladesh to provide descriptive evidence of both the relative importance of cognitive and non-cognitive skills in this part of the labor market and the interplay between skills and hiring channels in...

With the use of comparable data from seven West African capitals, we attempt to assess the rationale behind development policies targeting high rates of school enrolment through the prism of allocation of labour and returns to skills across the formal and informal sectors. We find that people...

We use a first-hand linked employer-employee dataset representing the formal sector of Bangladesh to explain gender wage gaps by the inclusion of measures of cognitive skills and personality traits. Our results show that while cognitive skills are important in determining mean wages, personality...