This paper studies the effects of a voluntary skill certification scheme in an online freelancing labour market. The paper show that obtaining skill certificates increases a worker’s earnings. This effect is not driven by increased worker productivity but by decreased employer uncertainty. The...

In this paper, the authors assess the relationship between digitalization and labour demand and supply, and how this relationship affects wages and income inequality. We also explore implications of recent digitalization trends for the future of work.

This study examines the causal link between individuals' occupational knowledge, educational choices, and labor market outcomes. We proxy occupational knowledge with mandatory visits to job information centers (JICs) in Germany while still attending school. Exogenous variation in the location...

This paper provides the first available evidence on overeducation/overskilling based on AlmaLaurea data. We focus on jobs held 5 years after graduation by pre-reform graduates in 2005. Overeducation/overskilling are relatively high – at 11.4 and 8% – when compared to EU economies. Ceteris...

We study the impact of student debt on various labor market outcomes, namely, labor market income, hourly wages, hours worked, and probability of full-time employment. Using data from the NLSY97 surveys and a difference-in-difference approach, we find statistically significant differences in...

This study examines the causal link between individuals' occupational knowledge, educational choices, and labor market outcomes. We proxy occupational knowledge with mandatory visits to job information centers (JICs) in Germany while still attending school. Exogenous variation in the location...

Labor market institutions, via their effect on the wage structure, affect the investment decisions of firms in labor markets with frictions. This observation helps explain rising wage inequality in the US, but a relatively stable wage structure in Europe in the 1980s. These different trends are...

In oligopsonistic labour markets, firms have some market power, and a wedge is created between wages and marginal product. When oligopsonistic firms' production technology requires generally trained workers, firms may therefore receive part of the returns to general training and be willing to...

This paper provides new evidence on the wage gap between informal and formal salary workers in South Africa, Brazil and Mexico. We use rich datasets that allow us to define informality in a relatively comparable fashion across countries. We compute precise wage differentials by accounting for...

There is an increasing interest in the process of job creation and destruction as well of hirings and separations. Many studies suggest that idiosyncratic firm-level characteristics shape both job and worker flows in a similar way in all countries. Others argue that cross-country differences in...