Policy debates about the balance of vocational and general education programs focus on the school-to-work transition. But with rapid technological change, gains in youth employment from vocational education may be offset by less adaptability and thus diminished employment later in life. To test...

The standard economic model of occupational choice following a basic Roy model emphasizes individual selection and comparative advantage, but the sources of comparative advantage are not well understood. We employ a unique combination of Dutch survey and registry data that links math and...

In 1996 Austria introduced a tax for the layoff of older workers, which was tightened in 2000. The regulation requires employers to pay a tax of up to 170 percent of the gross monthly income when they give notice to employees aged 50 or more. We use data from Austrian social security records to...

We estimate the causal effect of parents' unemployment on unemployment among their children in their own adulthood. We use administrative data for Austrian children born between 1974 and 1984 and apply an instrumental variables (IV) identification strategy using parents' job loss during a mass...

We estimate the causal effect of parents' unemployment on unemployment among their children in their own adulthood. We use administrative data for Austrian children born between 1974 and 1984 and apply an instrumental variables (IV) identification strategy using parents' job loss during a mass...

We estimate the causal effect of parents' unemployment on unemployment among their children in their own adulthood. We use administrative data for Austrian children born between 1974 and 1984 and apply an instrumental variables (IV) identification strategy using parents' job loss during a mass...

We investigate the expected college completion time of European college students by using data from a survey of more than 3000 students in 10 countries. We explain observed excess time to graduation by paying special attention to labor market variables, such as unemployment, wage differentials...

Decentralization of decision-making is among the most intriguing recent school reforms, in part because countries went in opposite directions over the past decade and because prior evidence is inconclusive. We suggest that autonomy may be conducive to student achievement in well-developed...

Existing estimates of the labor-market returns to human capital give a distorted picture of the role of skills across different economies. International comparisons of earnings analyses rely almost exclusively on school attainment measures of human capital, and evidence incorporating direct...

Expanded international data from the PIAAC survey of adult skills allow us to analyze potential sources of the cross-country variation of comparably estimated labor-market returns to skills in a more diverse set of 32 countries. Returns to skills are systematically larger in countries that have...