In Finland the gender wage gap increases significantly during the first 10 years after labor market entry accounting most of the life-time increase in the gender wage gap. This paper focuses on the early career gender wage differences among university graduates and considers several explanations...

Recent theories of firm heterogeneity emphasize between-firm wage differences as a new mechanism through which trade can affect wage inequality. Using linked employer-employee data for Sweden, we show that many of the stylized facts about wage inequality found in Helpman et al. (2012) for Brazil...

This CASEbrief reports on the findings of recent research examining the employment pathways followed by mothers entering low-skilled work. The project was originally framed under a Labour Government which placed considerable emphasis on encouraging women back into work when their children were...

Labor market institutions, via their effect on the wage structure, affect the investment decisions of firms in labor markets with frictions. This observation helps explain rising wage inequality in the US, but a relatively stable wage structure in Europe in the 1980s. These different trends are...

This paper assesses the potential of `workplace training'' with reference to German Apprenticeship. When occupational matching is important, we derive conditions under which firms provide `optimal'' training packages. Since the German system broadly meets these conditions, we evaluate the...

UK government policy encourages mothers of young children in low-income families to enter or return to work, via tax credit subsidies and support for childcare. Maternal employment is seen a central plank in the campaign against child poverty, both because it raises income immediately and...

In this paper we estimate the sorting effects of university degree class on initial labor market outcomes using a regression discontinuity design that exploits institutional rules governing the award of degrees. Consistent with anecdotal evidence, we find sizeable and significant effects for...

An increase over time in the proportion of young people obtaining a degree is likely to impact on the relative ability compositions (i) of graduates and non-graduates and (ii) across graduates with different classes of degree award. In a signalling framework, we examine the implications of this...

During the early Nineties the proportion of UK graduates doubled over a very short period of time. This paper investigates the effect of the expansion on early labour market attainment, focusing on over-education. We define over-education by combining occupation codes and a self-reported measure...

In the UK the gender pay gap on entry to the labour market is approximately zero but after ten years after labour market entry, there is a gender wage gap of almost 25 log points. This paper explores the reason for this gender gap in early-career wage growth, considering three main hypotheses -...