Education can generate important externalities that contribute towards economic growth and convergence. In this paper, we study the drivers of such externalities by conducting the first meta- analysis of the social returns to education literature. We analyse over 1,000 estimates from 31 articles...

The growth of novel flexible work formats raises a number of questions about their effects upon health and the potential public policy implications. However, answering these questions is hampered by data and identification constraints. This is the first paper that draws on comprehensive...

As China's firms upgrade their position in the quality ladder, vocational education may become more important. In this paper, we study returns to secondary vocational education in China paying attention to individual heterogeneity. We use instrumental variables based on geographical and...

Politicians can use the public sector to give jobs to cronies, at the expense of the efficiency of those organisations and general welfare. In this paper, we regress monthly hires across all firms in Portugal with some degree of public ownership on the country's 1980-2018 political cycle. We...

The increasing range and quality of China's exports is a major development internationally with potentially far-reaching effects. In this paper, on top of the direct labour market effects of imports from China studied in previous research, we also measure the indirect effects stemming from...

Employee representatives in firms are a potentially key but not yet studied source of the impact of unions and works councils. Their actions can shape multiple drivers of firm performance, including collective bargaining, strikes, and training. This paper examines the impact of union rep...

Do firms in China share rents with their workers? We address this question by examining firm-level panel data covering virtually all manufacturing firms over the period 2000-2007, representing an average of 52 million workers per year. We find evidence of rent sharing (RS), with wage-profit...

Do labour institutions influence how wages respond to the business cycle? Such responsiveness can then shape several economic outcomes, including unemployment. In this paper, we examine the role of two key labour market institutions - collective bargaining and temporary contracts - upon wage...

Do investments in soft skills pay off in terms of student achievement? This paper evaluates a large private-sector program in this area, EPIS, based on individual and small-group sessions of mediators that seek to improve the non-cognitive skills (e.g. motivation, self-esteem, conscientiousness)...

As work changes, firm-provided training may become more relevant for good economic and social outcomes. However, so far there is little or no causal evidence about the effects of training on firms. This paper studies a large training grants programme in Portugal, contrasting successful firms...