Using an international survey that directly assesses the cognitive skills of the adult population, I study the relation between skills and unemployment flows across 37 countries. Depending on the specifically assessed domain, I document that skills have an unconditional correlation with the...

This paper reviews the role of locus of control in the labor market. I begin with a discussion of the conceptual origins of locus of control, including its relationship to related concepts such as self-efficacy, motivation, and self-control. The relationship between locus of control and labor...

The global fight which aims at attracting the intellectuals would represent the main engine of the advantage in what regards the competition, whetting the nations, the workforce and companies one against the other, as the intellectuals become more and more rare. More and more studies and...

Professional competencies are a key factor in gauging how employable a graduate is. This paper demonstrates that individuals who have best developed the competencies which firms feel to be most important are more likely to be in a position to obtain a job. To this end, we have developed an...

How valuable are the education and skills acquired under socialism in a market economy? This paper uses data for about 3 million Hungarian wage earners, from 1986 to 1998, to throw light on this question. We find that returns to schooling reach 10 percent early on and remain at this high level....

We use census-like data and a regression discontinuity design to study the labor market impacts of a signal provided by a government-sponsored award given to top-performing students on a nationwide college exit exam in Colombia. Students who can signal their high level of specific skills earn...

Much of the literature on how acquisitions impact employee mobility has focused on the psychological consequences of acquisitions on employees. This study explores an alternative explanation of employee decisions to leave an acquired firm or not: potential changes in individuals’...

Skill mismatch is a key indicator of labour market research that has received significant attention. To date, various approaches of test-based measurement of skill mismatch have been used in research, generating differing results. However, it remains unclear which method is the most valid for...

We propose a new methodology for analyzing determinants of the wage gap between immigrants and natives. A Mincerian regression framework is extended to include GDP per capita in an immigrant's country of birth as a proxy for the quality of schooling and work experience acquired in that country....

This paper reviews the role of locus of control in the labor market. I begin with a discussion of the conceptual origins of locus of control, including its relationship to related concepts such as self-efficacy, motivation, and self-control. The relationship between locus of control and labor...