We introduce publicly funded education in R&D-based economic growth theory. The framework allows us to i) incorporate a realistic process of human capital accumulation for industrialized countries, ii) reconcile R&D-based growth theory with the empirical evidence on the relationship between economic prosperity and population growth, iii) revise the policy invariance result of semi-endogenous gr...

We use data from a résumé audit to estimate the impact of unemployment and underemployment on the employment prospects facing recent college graduates. We find no statistical evidence of negative duration dependence associated with unemployment spells for recent college graduates. Alternatively, college graduates who are underemployed have callback rates that are 30 percent lower than that for ...

Are minorities more vulnerable to opportunism? We find that individuals from a minority group face greater danger of being cheated by an opportunistic firm because trade with the group is less frequent and the value of a reputation for fairness toward the group is correspondingly smaller. If the majority is sufficiently large it can only lose from a solidarity strategy of punishing opportunism ...

This paper analyzes the returns to training that was co-fi nanced by the German voucher program Bildungsprämie. The estimation strategy compares outcomes of participants in voucher training with voucher recipients who intended to participate in training, but did not do so because of a random event like course cancellation by the provider of training. We fi nd no impact of voucher training on wa...

Migration, Transfers and Child Labor We examine agricultural child labor in the context of emigration, transfers, and the ability to hire outside labor. We start by developing a theoretical background based on Basu and Van, (1998), Basu, (1999) and Epstein and Kahana (2008) and show how hiring labor from outside the household and transfers to the household might induce a reduction in children’s...

In a matching and intra…rm bargaining economy with constant return to scale production and matching technologies, large …rms hire and train workers e¢ciently. The e¢ciency of the competitive economy relies on the ability of large …rm to take into account the consequences of training on the wages bargained inside the …rm. This intra…rm bargaining process solves the hold-up problem that is associ...

We measure U.S. publicly traded companies’ exposures to skilled labor risk, i.e., the potential failure in attracting and retaining skilled labor, by the intensity of their discussions on this issue in their 10-K filings. We show that this measure effectively captures firm risk due to the mobility of skilled labor. We find that skilled labor risk is an important determinant of corporate compens...

Contingency formulations of Human Resource Management (HRM) theory suggest that the effectiveness of HRM practices should vary across firms. This study examined whether the relationship between HRM practices and productivity in manufacturing companies is contingent upon organizational climate and strategic orientation. Information on HRM, organizational structure, and competitive strategy was c...

Wage and Occupational Assimilation by Skill Level: Migration Policy Lessons from Spain What are the migration policy lessons that can be learned from the Spanish case? Unlike countries with a large tradition of receiving immigrants, in Spain having a high-school degree does not give immigrants an advantage in terms of wage or occupational assimilation (relative to their native counterparts). Th...