This paper demonstrates that insiders can erect barriers to entry and skim rents by sinking costs in human capital when labour markets are otherwise perfectly contestable. The sunk costs nature of human capital investments may result from the need to satisfy ever increasing specialised skill...

The US labour market is characterized by a high skill wage mark-up and low unemployment, while the German labour market has a low skill wage mark-up and a high, mainly unskilled unemployment rate. This paper adds an innovative labour supply explanation to the discussion how these distinct labour...

In this paper, the authors document a growing divergence between current account imbalances in northern and southern euro area countries from 1992 to 2007. The imbalance occurred without a concomitant rise in productivity and growth in the southern (deficit) countries. The authors argue that...

This paper analyses the impact of the skill composition of migration flows on the host country's labour market in a specific-factors-two-sector model with heterogeneous labour (low, medium, and high skill) and price- and wage-setting behaviour. The low- and medium-skilled labour markets are...

This paper analyzes the impact of the skill composition of migration flows on the host country's labor market in a specific factors two-sector model with heterogeneous labor (low-, medium-, and highly-skilled) and price- and wage-setting behavior. The low- and medium-skilled labor markets are...

Expectations are usually introduced in macroeconomic stock-flow consistent models (SFC-models from hereon) in an ad hoc way, without much motivation. Moreover, these are usually very simple forms of expectations, and certainly not some form of rational expectations. The implicit assumption is...

By distinguishing between discretionary and non-discretionary fiscal policy, this paper analyses the stability of fiscal rules for EMU countries before and after the Maastricht Treaty. Using both Instrumental Variables and GMM techniques, it turns out that discretionary fiscal policy has...

In analysing the impact of education on wage differentials and wage growth, we use next topersonal characteristics (e.g. education and experience) also job characteristics (e.g. skillsrequired) to explain wages. We estimate wage equations on individual data for the USA, 1986 –1996. When...

According to Dalton's Law it does not matter which side of the market is taxed. This holds for a model of the labour market as well. Nevertheless, it is often maintained that shifting the wedge from employers to employees has favourable effects on employment. That is, a shift from employers' to...