In recent years there has been a plethora of empirical papers by economists concerning the effects of academic rank in school or college on subsequent outcomes of students. We review this recent literature, describing the difficult identification and measurement issues, the assumptions and...

The empirical literature on employer learning assumes that employers learn about unobserved ability differences across workers as they spend time in the labor market. This article describes testable implications that arise from this basic hypothesis and how they have been used to quantify the...

There is an increasing shift of attention from expanding apprenticeships to improving their quality and effectiveness. This brings into focus how apprenticeship is governed for greater relevance and matching to labour market needs, and how the content of what is taught at the workplace is...

The 2008 financial crisis, followed by the COVID-19 pandemic, presented significant challenges - along with some opportunities - for apprenticeship systems and schemes across Europe, bringing into focus their resilience in times of crisis. These events, along with trends such as the green and...

The role of skills and human capital during England's Industrial Revolution is the subject of an old but still ongoing debate. This paper contributes to the debate by assessing the artisanal skills of watchmakers and watch tool makers in southwest Lancashire in the eighteenth century and their...

We use administrative data from Ireland to study differences in college application behaviour between students from disadvantaged versus advantaged high schools. Ireland provides an interesting laboratory for this analysis as applicants provide a preferenceordering of college programs (majors)...

This study examines labour productivity performance and its determinants in Eastern European and Central Asian (EECA) firms using micro-level data. We find significant differences in labour productivity among members of the European Union in Eastern Europe and other Eastern European and Central...