A striking feature of labour supply in South Africa is the phenomenal expansion in the labourforce participation of women from 38 percent in 1995 to 46 percent in 2004. Even so, theirparticipation has been persistently lower than that of men whose participation rates were 58percent and 62...

This paper explores the identity formation of a cohort of students with immigrant backgroundsin Sweden and the consequences of identity for subsequent labor market outcomes. Uniquefor this study is that identity is defined according to a two-dimensional acculturationframework based on both...

There is an ambiguity in Amartya Sen's capability approach as to what constitutes an in-dividual's resources, conversion factors and valuable functionings. What we here call the\circularity problem" points to the fact that all three concepts seem to be mutually en-dogenous and interrelated. All...

This paper investigates some crucial aspects of the recent development of industrial districts in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, where this type of spatial agglomeration of industrial firms has flourished since the period immediately after the Second World War. In particular, it is aimed at...

We propose a simple but effective estimation procedure to extract the level and the volatilitydynamics of a latent macroeconomic factor from a panel of observable indicators. Our approachis based on a multivariate conditionally heteroskedastic exact factor model that cantake into account the...

This paper is an exercise in dating the Euro area business cycle on a monthly basis. Using a quite flexible interpolation routine, we construct several monthly series of Euro area real GDP, and then apply the Bry-Boschan (1971) procedure. To account for the asymmetry in growth regimes and...

This paper presents a harmonized data set over the period 1972-2002, containing two-yearly data on the number of non-agricultural business owners and the size of the labour force for 23 OECD countries, as well as the quotient of these two variables which is called the business ownership rate of...

Renewed interest in economic growth has encouraged studies of how different sectors have contributed to convergence trends. Comparing productivity levels across countries is notoriously tricky, but one attractive approach has been to deflate sector value added by the PPP exchange rate for GDP....

This paper sheds new light on the role of regional labor market conditions for regional mobility. We study competition for vacant jobs along two dimensions - between employed and unemployed job searchers, and between resident and non-resident job searchers - within a simple matching framework....

The composite indicator "Quality of work" for comparing European countries is constructed from data of the Third European Survey on Working Conditions. The main findings are as follows: (a) European countries differ with respect to working conditions statistically more signi¯cantly than with...