We analyze the causal effect of the length of the worker’s commute on worker's productivity, by examining whether commuting time has any effect on worker's labour market supply. Using the Spanish Time Use Survey 2002-03, our GMM/IV estimation yields a positive causal impact of commuting time...

The UK, with its relatively liberal immigration policies following recent enlargements, has been one of the main recipients of migrants from new EU member states. This paper poses the questions: what is the effect of immigration on a receiving economy such as the UK? Is the effect beneficial or...

Because Hayek’s view goes beyond the Walrasian framework, his descriptive arguments on socialist planned economies are prone to be misunderstood. This paper clarifies Hayek’s arguments by using them as a basis to construct a model of total factor productivity. The model shows that...

In this paper we show that wage inequality decreased in the Italian private sector, both in the upper and in the lower tail of the distribution, in the period 1993-2006. By applying a quantile decomposition procedure we find that the decrease of the 90/50 ratio is almost totally related to a...

We test whether and how the adoption of the euro, narrowly defined as the end of competitive devaluations, has affected member states' productive structures, distinguishing between within and across sector reallocation. We find evidence that the euro has been accompanied by a reallocation of...

In times of sweeping demographic changes, policy makers and business executives in mature economies perceive workforce aging as one potential threat to the capacity for innovation and technological progress. However, evidence for age-dependency in innovative performance is still scarce. Pressing...

In order to understand highly-skilled flexible workers’ job satisfaction, we take their track records into consideration, integrating several employment contracts. We conceptualize our research interest within the framework of the psychological contract to explore individual rationalities in...

This paper investigates the employment growth of small and medium-sized firms that survived the transformation process of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). We find that firms founded in the later period of the GDR’s existence have especially low growth prospects, even 10 years after German...

This paper investigates the employment growth of small and medium-sized firms that survived the transformation process of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). We find that firms founded in the later period of the GDR’s existence have especially low growth prospects, even 10 years after German...

This paper considers a setting in which the acquisition of human capital entails a change of location in social space that causes individuals to revise their comparison groups. Skill levels are viewed as occupational groups, and moving up the skill ladder by acquiring additional human capital,...