Most welfare programs generate high marginal tax rates on labor income. This paper uses a representative sample of individua ls on France's main welfare program (the Revenu Minimum d'Insertion, or RMI) to estimate monetary gains to employment for welfare recipients. This is based on the...

In this paper, we provide an industry-level analysis of skill-biased technological change (SBTC) in Denmark over the last two decades. The analysis shows that SBTC has varied considerably across industries, and traditionally large Danish industries have experienced relatively less SBTC. This may...

This study investigates real wage cyclicality in Portugal for the years of 1986-98, addressing the heterogeneity in wages responses to aggregate labor market conditions for workers’ hirings and separations. The results exhibit a moderate procyclical behavior of real wages for continuously...

Reduced-form tests of scale effects in markets with search, run when aggregate matching functions are estimated, may miss important scale effects at the micro level, because of the reactions of job searchers. A semi-structural model is developed and estimated on a British sample, testing for...

The apprenticeship system is the most important source of formal post-secondary training in Germany. Our paper contributes to the ongoing debate as to why firms are willing to invest in such training even though many apprentices will leave the training firm soon after completion of the...

We consider the early labour market experience of young persons. Using a large data sample of Norwegian individuals finishing education in 1989-91, we analyze the transition from school to work and the duration of the first job. We allow the search duration, the accepted wage, and the job...

There is widespread belief that workers in temporary agency work (TAW) are subject to poorer working conditions, in particular pay, than comparable workers in the rest of the economy. The first aim of this analysis is to quantify the wage penalty, if any, for workers in TAW. Secondly, we analyze...

Why is it that, as the Chinese Communist Party has loosened its grip, abandoned its core beliefs, and marketized the economy, its membership has risen markedly along with the economic benefits of joining? We use three national household surveys, spanning eleven years, to answer this question...

This study compares the structure and determinants of inter-industry wage differentials in Eastern and Western European countries (namely Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and Spain compared with Latvia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia). To do so, we use a...

When labor markets are imperfectly competitive, firms may be willing to finance general training if the wage structure is compressed, that is, if the increase of productivity after training is greater than the increase in pay. We propose a novel way of testing this proposition, which exploits...