In analysing the impact of education on wage differentials and wage growth, we use next to personal characteristics (e.g. education) also job characteristics (e.g. skills required) to explain wages. We estimate wage equations on individual data for the Netherlands, 1986 – 1998. It turns out...

Under the standard neo-classical growth framework, conditional convergence studies assume that a country with a higher initial human capital among others ''performs'' better. Nevertheless the growth implications of health, another component of human capital, compared to education, have not been...

In analysing the impact of education on wage differentials and wage growth, we use next topersonal characteristics (e.g. education and experience) also job characteristics (e.g. skillsrequired) to explain wages. We estimate wage equations on individual data for the USA, 1986 –1996. When...

The changing wage and employment structure in some OECD countries has beenattributed to increased levels of education and technical change in favour of skilledworkers. However, in the Netherlands and some other OECD countries the wages ofskilled workers did not rise, whereas investment in skills...

In this article we present a model with two levels of skills and two classes of goods, one produced with a technology requiring high skills, the other produced with a technology that can be operated by both low and high skilled workers. In this model skill biased technical change causes a drop...

In analysing the impact of education on wage differentials and wage growth, we use next to personal characteristics (e. g. education and experience) also jobcharacteristics (e. g. skills required) to explain wages. We estimate wage equations on individual data for Germany, 1984 – 2000. When...

Recent empirical work has shown that ongoing international financial integration facilitates cross-country consumption risk-sharing. While these studies typically employ absolutemeasures to account for a country''s integration in international capital markets, we devise a relative measure that...

We model a three-pillar pension system and analyse in this context the impact of the financial crisis on the aggregate economy, using an overlapping generations model where individuals live for two periods. The system consists of (1) a PAYG pension system, (2) a Defined Benefit pension fund, and...

Unprecedented growth in private cross-border asset trade and asymmetric internationalbalance sheets are well-documented stylized facts of financial integration. Moreover, weobserve that current accounts are no longer the number one determinant of external balances. Advancing the work of...

In this paper we document the growing dispersion of external and internal balances between countries in the North and South of the Euro area over the time period 1992 to 2007. We find a persistent divergence process that seems to have started with the introduction of the common currency and has...