In Germany, apprenticeship training firms currently face a shrinking number of qualified school-leavers because of smaller birth cohorts and an increasing proportion of school leavers aiming for higher education. This paper investigates whether a programme that supports firms to train...

In France, two years after school completion and getting the same diploma, the employmentrate of apprentices is about 15 percentage points higher than that of vocational students.Despite this difference, this paper shows that there is almost no difference between theprobability of getting a...

In this paper we analyse the role of wage expectations in an empirical model of incomplete spells of unemployment and reservation wages. To be specific, we model the duration of unemployment, reservation wages and expected wages simultaneously for a sample of individuals who are not in work,...

This article investigates the impact of unemployment on the likelihood of having a first child. Using micro-data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP), I apply event history methods to analyze first-birth decisions in France, West Germany, and the UK (1994-2001). The results...

Our findings suggest the existence of a gender reservation wage gap. The presence of children, particularly pre-school age children, plays an important role in determining the proportion of this gap that can be explained by individual characteristics. For individuals without children, the...

In this paper we analyse the role of wage expectations in an empirical model of incomplete spells of unemployment and reservation wages. To be specific, we model the duration of unemployment, reservation wages and expected wages simultaneously for a sample of individuals who are not in work,...

Our findings suggest the existence of a gender reservation wage gap. The presence of children, particularly pre-school age children, plays an important role in determining the proportion of this gap that can be explained by individual characteristics. For individuals without children, the...

Active labour market policy (ALMP) is widely used in European countries to reduce youth unemployment and help young people in their transition from school into apprenticeships and employment. Spending on ALMP for young people varies significantly and in surprising ways across countries. However,...

This paper reviews current issues in youth labour markets in developed countries. It argues that young people aged 16-25 have been particularly hard hit during the current recession. Using the USA and UK as cast studies, it analyses both causes and effects of youth unemployment using micro-data....

The matching method for treatment evaluation does not balance selective unobserved differences between treated and non-treated. We derive a simple correction term if there is an instrument that shifts the treatment probability to zero in specific cases. Policies with eligibility restrictions,...