Building on the canonical model of skill-biased technical change to incorporate differential effects of technology and international trade on the skill composition of occupations, the paper employs a task-based approach to analyze structural changes in regional employment within a rich...

Studies on the determinants of the demand for higher education typically emphasizethe relevance of socio-economic factors, but leave the spatial dimensions of the prospectivestudents’ university choices largely unexplored. In this study, we investigate the determinantsof university entrance...

We develop a model of an economy with several regions, which differ in scale. Within each region, workers have to search for a job-type that matches their skill. They face a trade-off between match quality and the cost of extended search. This trade-off differs between regions, because search is...

We hypothesize, and test for, a negative effect of the length of the commute on worker’s productivity, by examining whether the commute has a positive effect on worker’s absenteeism. Our estimates for Germany indicate that commuting distance induces absenteeism with an elasticity of about...

Based on micro-data on individual workers for the period 2000-2005, we show that wage differentials in the Netherlands are small but present. A large part of these differentials can be attributed to individual characteristics of workers. Remaining effects are partially explained by variations in...

Previous research suggests that the local stock of human capital creates positive externalities within local labor markets and plays an important role in regional economic development. However, there is still considerable uncertainty over what types of human capital are most important. Both...

Economics has been shown to be a relatively high earning college major, but geographic differences in earnings have been largely overlooked. This paper uses the American Community Survey to examine geographic differences in both absolute earnings and relative earnings for economic majors. We...

This paper examines job polarization at the level of local labor markets in Germany over a 30-year period. The major explanation of job polarization is skill biased technological change (SBTC): new technologies are complementary to high paying jobs but substitute workers in routine manual jobs...

The aim of this study is to determine optimal migration policies for an individual of known age-dependent mortality who accumulates capital by compound interest and also by skill-dependent income. By a continuing choice of several environments, which vary in intrinsic preference and in the rates...

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the extent to which people in different occupations locate near one another, or coagglomerate. We construct pairwise Ellison-Glaeser coagglomeration indices for U.S. occupations and use these measures to investigate the factors influencing the...