Die Arbeitsgruppe Beschäftigung der von NRW-Ministerpräsident Jürgen Rüttgers eingesetzten Zukunftskommission hat umfassende Empfehlungen für die künftige Wirtschafts- und Arbeitsmarktpolitik in Nordrhein-Westfalen vorgelegt. Das Papier der von IZA-Direktor Klaus F. Zimmermann geleiteten...

This paper analyzes the self-selection patterns among Mexican return migrants during the period 1990-2010. To calculate the selection patterns, we nonparametrically estimate the counterfactual wages that the return migrants would have experienced had they never migrated by using the wage...

We analyze the relationship between the age profile of retirement within an immigrant population and aggregate return migration rates for individuals from different countries of origin. The latter serves as a proxy for the relative net benefits of return migration to that origin country. Our...

Cognitive ability measures are often taken as explanatory variables in regression analysis, e.g., as a factor affecting a market outcome such as an individual's wage, or a decision such as an individual's education acquisition. Cognitive ability is a latent construct; its true value is...

Temporary agency work (TAW) is believed to facilitate the matching between firms and on-the-job searchers. This leads to shortening of the unemployment and job search duration. On the other hand, firms that hire temporary workers have less incentive to train them, which makes it difficult for...

Becoming unemployed has negative effects on life satisfaction; a transition from unemployment to employment, however, has only small positive effects. This asymmetry indicates a potential omitted variable bias in previous empirical happiness studies, with the consequence of underesti-mated...

Operationalizing the capability approach (CA) is difficult due to the conceptual challenges it poses: its multidimensionality and the role it assigns to freedom of choice for human wellbeing. Therefore the operationalizability of the CA has been questioned. Despite this, a lot of empirical...

We study the properties of two specification tests that have been applied to a variety of estimators in the context of value-added measures (VAMs) of teacher and school quality: the Hausman test for choosing between random and fixed effects and a test for feedback (sometimes called a...

Do migrants send remittances as a way of obtaining insurance? While this motive is theoretically suggested in the literature, the question of identifying this relationship empirically has only begun to be explored. Using a unique representative survey of 1500 immigrants in the Greater Dublin...

This chapter begins by documenting that temporary migrations are not only very common, but that outmigration of immigrants is selective both in terms of migrants' individual characteristics and their economic outcomes. We then examine the problems that arise when estimating immigrants' earnings...