Job creation has lowered unemployment, but the Belgian labour market still faces many challenges. Employment rates remain low, reflecting barriers to finding a job such as low levels of skills and weak work incentives. In addition, the changing nature of work will require faster adaptation of...

The unemployment rise in EU countries has been particularly strong for low-skilled workers. This observation has often been explained in terms of biased technical change and relative wage rigidities. More attention has been paid recently to an alternative mechanism, the crowding-out of...

This paper proposes a new method to estimate the extent of job competition between workers with different schooling levels. We estimate the structural parameters of a matching function generalised to incorporate crowding out effects. We use flow data out of unemployment containing information on...

We use Belgianfirm-level data over the period 1996-2007 to analyze the impact of im- ports from China and other low-wage countries onfirm growth, exit, and skill upgrading in manufacturing. For this purpose we use both industry-level andfirm-level imports by country of origin and distinguish...

We provide first evidence regarding the direct impact of educational mismatch on firm productivity. To do so, we rely on representative linked employer-employee panel data for Belgium covering the period 1999-2006. Controlling for simultaneity issues, time-invariant unobserved workplace...