Most of the literature on the evaluation of training programs focuses on the effect of participation on a particular outcome (e.g. earnings). The “treatment” is generally represented by a binary variable equal to one if participation in the program occurs, and equal to zero if no...

Although economists acknowledge that various indicators of educational attainment (e.g., highest grade completed, credentials earned) might serve as signals of a worker’s productivity, the practical importance of education-based signaling is not clear. In this paper we estimate the signaling...

The wave of corporate downsizing in the 1990s focused attention on the role of long-term employment relationships in the United States. Given 1) the importance that these relationships have played historically, 2) the general view that long-term jobs are “good jobs,” and 3) the suspicion...

This paper provides new evidence on job search intensity of the unemployed in the U.S., modeling job search intensity as time allocated to job search activities. The main findings are: 1) the average unemployed worker in the U.S. devotes about 41 minutes to job search on weekdays, which is...

The increasing globalization of production and trade in the last 25 years has required substantial adjustment of employment relationships in the United States and Japan. Worker attachment to firms has always been lower in the U.S. than in Japan, and this is reflected in a difference in...