This paper examines the influence of educational mismatch on wages according to workers' region of birth, taking advantage of our access to rich matched employer-employee data for the Belgian private sector for the period 1999-2010. Using a fine-grained approach to measuring educational mismatch...

We describe gender and socioeconomic inequalities in the Big Five personality traits over the life cycle, using a facet-level inventory linked to administrative data. We estimate life-cycle profiles non-parametrically and test for cohort and sample-selection effects. We discuss the economic...

Using longitudinal matched employer-employee data for the period 1999-2006, we investigate the relationship between age, wage and productivity in the Belgian private sector. More precisely, we examine how changes in the proportions of young (16-29 years), middle-aged (30-49 years) and older...

Labour economists typically assume that pay differences between occupations can be explained with variations in productivity. The empirical evidence on the validity of this assumption is surprisingly thin and subject to various potential biases. The authors use matched employer-employee panel...

We use a large, nationally-representative sample of working-age adults to demonstrate that personality (as measured by the Big Five) is stable over a four-year period. Average personality changes are small and do not vary substantially across age groups. Intra-individual personality change is...

This article puts the relationship between wage dispersion and firm productivity to an updated test, taking advantage of access to detailed Belgian linked employer-employee panel data. Controlling for simultaneity issues, time-invariant workplace characteristics and dynamics in the adjustment...

The labour market situation of low-educated people is particularly critical in most advanced economies, especially among youngsters and women. Policies aiming to increase their employability either try to foster their productivity and/or to decrease their wage cost. Yet, the evidence on the...

Using data from a new longitudinal survey of doctors from Australia, the authors test whether observed large gender-pay gaps among general practitioners (GPs) are the result of women's larger willingness to interrupt their careers. On average, female GPs earn A$83,000 or 54% less than male GPs....

Policy-makers worldwide are embarking on school programmes aimed at boosting students' resilience. One facet of resilience is a belief about cause and effect in life, locus of control. I test whether positive control beliefs work as a psychological buffer against health shocks in adulthood. To...

The authors use matched employer-employee panel data on Belgian private-sector firms to estimate the relationship between wage/productivity differentials and the firm's labor composition in terms of part-time and sex. Findings suggest that the groups of women and part-timers generate employer...