We study labor-market returns to vocational versus general secondary education using a regression discontinuity design created by the centralized admissions process in Finland. Admission to the vocational track increases annual income by 7 percent at age 31, and the benefits show no signs of...

Policymakers in many OECD countries are increasingly concerned about high and rising inequality. Much of the evidence (as far back as Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations) points to the importance of skills in tackling wage inequality. Yet a recent strand of the research argues that (cognitive)...

Income and earning inequality has been on the rise in most of the OECD and in many emerging economies since the 1980s. This paper estimates a model of earnings inequality across OECD countries that incorporates determinants of relative demand and supply of more and less-skilled labour. Drawing...

In the last decades the US economy experienced a rise in female labor force participation, a reversal of the gender education gap and a closing of the gender wage gap. Importantly, these changes occurred at a substantially different pace over time. During the same period, workers in the US faced...

The digital divide in general, and between women and men in particular, is a manifestation of exclusion, poverty and inequality, and is likely to continue because of the effects of unemployment, poorly functioning digital skilling programmes and socio-cultural norms in some economies, and...

This essay provides a comprehensive interpretative framework to understand the reasons why the school-to-work transition (SWT) is so slow and hard in Italy. The country is a typical example of the South European SWT regime, where the educational system is typically rigid and sequential, the...

This paper analyses the relationship between wage inequality and labour market development. Relevant economic theories are ambiguous, just as public debates. We measure the effects of wage inequality, skill-biased and skill-neutral technology on hours worked, productivity and wages in a novel...