We develop a model which shows that wages, prices and real income should grow faster in countries with low increase in their labour force. If not, other countries experience growing unemployment and/or trade deficit. This result is applied to the case of Germany, which has displayed a...

Labour market constraints constitute prominent obstacles to firm development and economic growth of countries located in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This paper aims at examining the implications of firm characteristics, national locations, and sectoral associations for the...

Theoretical arguments and previous country-level evidence indicate that immigrants are more fluid than natives in responding to changing labor shortages across countries, skill-groups or industries. The diversity across EU member states enables us to test this hypothesis across various...

It has been well documented that immigrants' clustering of residence in large cities has been associated with the creation of a number of ethnic enclaves. The intensive exposure to own-ethnic population could affect immigrant labour market involvement positively or negatively. However, no extant...

We analyze short and long-term effects of worker displacement. Our focus is on prime-age male workers displaced from Norwegian manufacturing plants. We find that displacement increases the probability of exiting the labor force by about 5 percentage points. This indicates that studies using data...

During the 2001-8 period, the employment rate of people with a disability remained remarkably low in most western economies, hardly responding to better macroeconomic conditions and favourable anti-discrimination legislation and interventions. Continuing health and productivity improvements in...

The interpretation of graduate mismatch manifested either as overeducation or as overskilling remains problematical. This paper uses annual panel information on both educational and skills mismatches uniquely found in the HILDA survey to analyse the relationship of both mismatches with pay, job...

In this paper we show that vocational training is an important determinant of productivity growth. We construct a multi-country, multi-sectoral dataset, and quantify empirically to what extent vocational training has contributed to increase the growth rate of labor productivity in Europe between...

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...

Failure of participants to complete training programs is pervasive in existing active labor market programs both in developed and developing countries. The proportion of dropouts in prototypical programs ranges from 10 to 50 percent of all participants. From a policy perspective, it is of...