This paper examines return predictability when the investor is uncertain about the right state variables. A novel feature of the model averaging approach used in this paper is to account for finite-sample bias of the coefficients in the predictive regressions. Drawing on an extensive...

This paper explores whether investments in information and communication technologies (ICT) and firm?sponsored training programmes are complementary. Three approaches are applied to panel data from German service companies for the time period 1994?98. Results for a system of interrelated factor...

This paper analyses the link between educational attainment and unemployment risk in a French-German comparison, based on a discrete time competing risks hazard rate model applied to comparable microdata sets. The unemployment risk is broken down into the risk of entering unemployment and the...

This paper compares the work attachment of French and German women after childbirth. Both fertility and employment of mothers are higher in France than in Germany. Since the sample of mothers deciding on employment after a child is born might not be representative for all women, we take account...

In this paper we analyze the impact of information technology and organizational changes on wages using individual level data for 1998/1999. The average impact of IT use on wages turns out to be five to six percent, however, the effects differ across different IT components. Unless employees use...

We investigate different techniques to assess the gender pay gap in five EU countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and United Kingdom), focusing on self-selection into market work. Results show that selectivity correction has an impact on both wage estimates and wage gap decomposition. If...

This paper analyses the relationship between education, gender and earnings in France and Germany. The model chosen here enables to estimate the impact of education not only on the expected earnings level but also on their dispersion, taking gender-specific sample selectivity into account. The...

This paper analyzes computer use by older male employees and estimates the impact of computer use on their employment status, based on individual data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) for the years 1997 and 2001. In line with previous research on the diffusion of new technologies, a...