In this paper we make a systematic presentation of returns to education in Austria for the period 1981-1997. We use consistent cross-selections from the Mikrozensus and find falling returns over time. These falling returns are not caused by changes in the sample design and reduced willingness to...

Personnel economics has put forward conflicting arguments concerning the impact of increased wage dispersion within a firm on the productivity of its workers. Besides giving more incentives, bigger wage differentials might also give rise to less co-operation and more politicking amongst workers...

If job searchers don't know the wage offer distribution they are facing, they might take the wage structure in their last firm as a prior. Doing so, reservation wages will be biased which will also bias unemployment duration. Using data for Austrian workers it is shown that workers seem to have...

In job-search theory, the existence of an optimal reservation wage depends crucially on the assumption of a known wage offer distribution. But in general, job searchers don't know the wage offer distribution from where they can sample. In this case, workers might take the wage structure in their...

Personnel economics has put forward conflicting arguments concerning the impact of increased wage dispersion within a firm on the productivity of its workers. Besides giving more incentives, bigger wage differentials might also give rise to less co-operation and more politicking amongst workers...

We show that providing publicly available wage information in vacancies, so-called external pay transparency, can reduce the gender wage gap. There is an increasing interest in pay transparency policies as a tool to combat unequal pay. We exploit a reform of Austria's Equal Treatment Law to...

We show that providing publicly available wage information in vacancies, so-called external pay transparency, can reduce the gender wage gap. There is an increasing interest in pay transparency policies as a tool to combat unequal pay. We exploit a reform of Austria's Equal Treatment Law to...

We show that providing publicly available wage information in vacancies, so-called external pay transparency, can reduce the gender wage gap. There is an increasing interest in pay transparency policies as a tool to combat unequal pay. We exploit a reform of Austria’s Equal Treatment Law to...

Individual time preference determines schooling enrollment. Moreover, smoking behavior in early ages has been shown to be highly related to time preference rates. Accordingly, we use smoking at age 16 as an instrument for schooling in order to cope with ability bias in a returns to education...

We study the effect of job displacement on fertility in a sample of white collar women in Austria. Using instrumental variables methods we show that unemploy- ment incidence as such has no negative effect on fertility decisions, but the very fact of being displaced from a career-oriented job...