Technological change is transforming Ireland’s economic structures, leading to new jobs and innovative products that benefit consumers. Adoption of new technologies by businesses has been high relative to many other OECD economies, but it has been uneven across industries and the impact on...

A randomized controlled trial with 945 entrepreneurs in Jamaica shows positive short-term impacts of soft-skills training on business outcomes. The effects are concentrated among men and disappear 12 months after the training. The main channel is increased adoption of recommended business...

A randomized control trial with 945 entrepreneurs in Jamaica shows positive shortterm impacts of soft-skills training on business outcomes. The effects are concentrated among men, and disappear twelve months after the training. We argue that the main channel is increased adoption of recommended...

Are labor markets in higher-income countries more meritocratic, in the sense that worker-job matching is based on skills rather than idiosyncratic attributes unrelated to productivity? If so, why? And what are the aggregate consequences? Using internationally comparable data on worker skills and...

Are labor markets in higher-income countries more meritocratic, in the sense that worker-job matching is based on skills rather than idiosyncratic attributes unrelated to productivity? If so, why? And what are the aggregate consequences? Using internationally comparable data on worker skills and...

We extend Lazear's theory of skills variety and entrepreneurship in three directions. First, we provide a theoretical framework linking new business creation with an entrepreneur's skill variety. Second, in this model we allow for both generalists and specialists to possess skill variety. Third,...

We extend Lazear's theory of skills variety and entrepreneurship in three directions. First, we provide a theoretical framework linking new business creation with an entrepreneur's skill variety. Second, in this model we allow for both generalists and specialists to possess skill variety. Third,...

The demographic transition -the move from a high fertility/high mortality regime into a low fertility/low mortality regime- is one of the most fundamental transformations that countries undertake. To study demographic transitions across time and space, we compile a data set of birth and death...

We use data from a new international dataset - the European Skills and Jobs Survey - to create a unique measure of skills-displacing technological change (SDT), defined as technological change that may render workers' skills obsolete. We find that 16 percent of adult workers in the EU are...

This paper uses the French and the UK Labour Force Surveys and the German Microcensus to estimate the effects of different components of the labour force on innovation at the sectoral level between 1994 and 2005. The authors focus, in particular, on the contribution of migrant workers. We adopt...