Germany did not establish a statutory minimum wage until 2015. The new wage floor was set at an initial level of €8.50 per hour. When it was introduced, about 11 percent of German employees earned less than that amount. Based on descriptive figures, qualitative research and...

A productive workforce is a key objective of public economic policy. Recent empirical work suggests that increasing individual participation in sports and exercise can be a major force for achieving this goal. The productivity gains and related increase in earnings come on top of the already...

Workers participating in firm-sponsored training receive higher wages as a result. But given that firms pay the majority of costs for training, shouldn't they also benefit? Empirical evidence shows that this is in fact the case. Firm-sponsored training leads to higher productivity levels and...

As Switzerland experiences a severe shortage of nurses, this paper investigates the impact of students' ex ante wage expectations on their choice to pursue a nursing college education. This analysis contributes to a small yet rapidly developing body of literature that uses subjective expectation...

How valuable is education for entrepreneurs’ performance as compared to employees’? What might explain any differences? And does education affect peoples’ occupational choices accordingly? We answer these questions based on a large panel of US labor force participants. We show that...

This paper investigates the influence of parental education on the returns to experience of Italian men using a new longitudinal dataset that contains detailed information on individual working histories. Our favourite panel estimates indicate that an additional year of parental education...