The twenty-five years after WW 2 witnessed strong labour market institutions and beneficial labour market outcomes -- high wage growth and integration of low-skilled immigrants. Then came the macro shocks of the mid 1970s. Labour market outcomes deteriorated as full-time employment population...

We construct an endogenous growth model that includes a cultural variable along the dimension of individualism-collectivism. The model predicts that more individualism leads to more innovation because of the social rewards associated with innovation in an individualist culture. This cultural...

This paper studies technology adoption in a cluster of soccer-ball producers in Sialkot, Pakistan. We invented a new cutting technology that reduces waste of the primary raw material and gave the technology to a random subset of producers. Despite the arguably unambiguous net benefits of the...

This paper analyses the relationship between training, job satisfaction and workplace performance using the British 2004 Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS). Several measures of performance are analysed including absence, quits, financial performance, labour productivity and product...

Having faced high unemployment rates for more than a decade, the German government implemented a comprehensive set of labour market reforms during the period 2003-2005. This paper describes the economic and institutional context of the German labour market before and after these so-called Hartz...

Simon Rottenberg's seminal 1956 article in the Journal of Political Economy, 1956, is generally accepted as the starting point for the development of the economics of sport. While he recognised that certain features of professional sports leagues were unusual he saw little reason to treat this...

For the purpose of understanding the underlying mechanisms behind intergenerational associations in income and education, recent studies have explored the intergenerational transmission of abilities. We use a large representative sample of Swedish men to examine both intergenerational and...

Within immigrant society different groups wish to help the migrants in different ways – immigrant societies are multi-layered and multi-dimensional. We examine the situation where there exists a foundation that has resources and that wishes to help the migrants. To do so they need migrant...

Employers structure pay and employment relationships to mitigate agency problems. A large literature in economics documents how the resolution of these problems shapes personnel policies and labor markets. For the most part, the study of agency in employment relationships relies on highly...

Why did employment growth – high in the last decade – take place at the expense of young workers in the countries of Central and Southern Europe? This is the question addressed in this paper. Youth unemployment has approached or exceeded 20% despite a variety of factors, common to most EU...