This paper investigates whether the quality of higher education and, in particular, its research performance stimulate graduates’ research-oriented careers. More specifically, exploiting a very rich data-set on university graduates and the higher education institutions they attended, we...

We sketch a visionary strategy for Europe in which full employment is quickly regained by 2020, income inequality is reduced and the economies are more sustainable. We call this scenario "vibrant". It is contrasted with what would happen if present policies continue within the European Union...

The crisis slowed down the implementation of the Lisbon Strategy (for the EU to become the most competitive region in the world). The crisis has aggravated the divergence between the North West of Europe and Southern Europe in labor productivity imparted by the knowledge economy. At the same...

In this study we analyze whether the gender composition of siblings within a family affects the choice of College Major. The question is whether a family environment that is more gender-homogeneous encourages academic choices that are less gender stereotyped. We use the last name and the exact...

We sketch a visionary strategy for Europe in which full employment is quickly regained by 2020, where income inequality is reduced and the economies are more sustainable. We name this scenario “vibrant.” It is contrasted with what would happen if present policies continue within the European...

We examine the effect of pregnancy and parenthood on the research productivity of academic economists. Combining the survey responses of nearly 10,000 economists with their publication records as documented in their RePEc accounts, we do not find that motherhood is associated with low research...

It is well known that highly "female" fields of study in tertiary education are characterized by higher fertility. However, existing work does not disentangle the selection-causality nexus. We use variation in gender composition of fields of study implied by the recent expansion of tertiary...

We examine the effect of pregnancy and parenthood on the research productivity of academic economists. Combining the survey responses of nearly 10,000 economists with their publication records as documented in their RePEc accounts, we do not find that motherhood is associated with low research...

This paper reports evidence on the strong tendency of the college educated to match with partners who graduated in the same field of study – a dimension of assortative matching that has been overlooked thus far. We employ Labor Force Survey data covering most EU countries to measure the extent...