This paper investigates the transferability of human capital across countries and the contribution of imperfect human capital portability to the explanation of the immigrant-native wage gap. Using data for West Germany, our results reveal that, overall, education and labor market experience...

The paper compares the pattern of wage assimilation of foreigners with both native immigrants and local natives in Italy, a country with large internal and international migration. This comparison, not yet exploited, yields understanding of the role played by language and knowledge of social...

Combining unique individual level H-1B data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and data from the 2009 American Community Survey, we analyze earnings differences between H-1B visa holders and US born workers in STEM occupations. The data indicate that H-1Bs are younger and...

We study the role of establishment-specific wage premiums in generating recent increases in West German wage inequality. Models with additive fixed effects for workers and establishments are fit in four sub-intervals spanning the period from 1985 to 2009. We show that these models provide a good...

This paper investigates the link between variation in the supply of workers who participate in specific types of active labour market policies (ALMPs) and firm performance using a new exceptionally informative German employer-employee data base. For identification we exploit that German local...

This paper investigates the macroeconomic effects of job creation schemes and vocational training on the matching processes in West Germany. The empirical analysis is based on regional data for local employment office districts for the period from 1999 to 2003. The empirical model relies on a...

If labour market policies aimed at people with disabilities are effective, we should observe no significant difference in labour market outcomes between disable and non-disable individuals. This paper examines the impact of disability status on labour market outcomes using matching methods...

Over the last year the German government has introduced a comprehensive set of labor market policy reforms, the so-called Hartz reforms, which aim at a significant reduction of unemployment. To this end, (a) many of the existing instruments of active labor market policy are modified...

When workers adopt technology at the point where the costs equal the increased productivity, output per worker increases immediately, while the productivity benefits increase only gradually if the costs continue to fall. As a result, workers in computer-adopting labor market groups experience an...

18 studies using data from 20 highly developed, developing, and less developed countries document that average wages in exporting firms are higher than in non-exporting firms from the same industry and region. The existence of these so-called exporter wage premia is one of the stylized facts...