Why do firms diversify into unrelated product markets? Internal labor markets allow firms to reallocate workers in response to industry shocks. They also strengthen workers’ incentives to invest in transferable, productivity-enhancing skills. Thus, the transferability of human capital can be a source of merger synergies. To test this hypothesis, we construct an index of human capital transferab...

Repeated Job Quits: Stepping Stones or Learning about Quality? Despite the fact that worker quits are often associated with wage gains and higher overall job satisfaction, many workers quit once again within one or two years after changing jobs initially. Such repeated job quit behavior may arise as a stepping stone to better quality jobs (Burdett, 1978) or as a response to unexpectedly low job...

This paper assesses theoretically and examines empirically the effects of time preferences on two types of career investments: work effort and on-the-job search activities. Whereas the former increases the probability of getting promoted, the latter affect the chance of receiving an outside job offer. The aim of this study is to test the exponential versus the hyperbolic discounting model withi...

This paper examines the degree of intergenerational economic mobility in Italy. It adds to the growing number of international studies of the extent to which economic status is passed on across generations. On the basis of recent econometric innovations used in the literature (Bjorklund and Jantti, 1997), we are able to overcome some of the data limitations for Italy. We use the Historical Data...

This paper investigates the extent to which the duration and the receipt of social assistance (SA) are linked between parents and children in Germany. Several related questions are addressed. Does parents’ SA duration increase the future welfare dependency of children? Given exposure of welfare at home, are daughters more likely to live on SA later on than sons? Are there any differences in the...

There are few studies on occupational choices in Germany, and the second generation occupational choice and mobility is even less investigated. Such research is important because occupations determine success in the labor market. In a country like Germany occupations also reflect a general socio-economic standing. This paper looks at the patterns of employment in Germany, analyzes how individua...

In most countries, children from disadvantaged backgrounds are under-represented amongst the undergraduate population. One explanation is that they do not see higher education as a realistic goal; that it is ‘not for the likes of them’. In this paper, I use the Programme for International Assessment data to investigate whether 15 year olds from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to expec...

Do Employment Quotas Explain the Occupational Choices of Disadvantaged Minorities in India? This article investigates the effects of a large-scale public sector employment quota policy for disadvantaged minorities (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) in India on their occupational choices, as defined by skill level, during the 1980s and 1990s. We find that, first, the employment quota policy...

This paper provides the first full account of intergenerational mobility in Britain using the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) for the period 1991-1999. The estimates obtained from a sample of all adults who provide information on their parents’ occupation when they were aged 14 point to an intergenerational elasticity – measured in terms of Hope-Goldthorpe scores of occupational prestige ...

In this paper I provide evidence that initial occupational assignments a¤ect the ability revelation of young workers in the labor market. Di¤erences in employer learning about worker’s ability carry two implications: First, the growth in wage dispersion with experience will di¤er across initial occupations; Second, the growth in the coe¢ cient of a variable that employers initially do not obser...