The authors hypothesize that the effectiveness of external threats in raising workers' effort is mediated by, among other labor market conditions, the presence or absence of a powerful union. In particular, they argue that because powerful unions reduce the potency of the external threat of job...

Two theories of over-qualification are considered, namely mismatch, whereby workers do not find the most appropriate jobs for their skills, because of imperfect information or labour market rigidities, and 'heterogeneous workers', whereby individuals with the same qualifications have different...

This study seeks to explain changes in the post-compulsory education participation rates of 16- and 18-year-old people in England and Wales, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. The results suggest that the key explanatory variable is the increase in prior academic attainment before the end of...

The stylized facts associated with workers satisfaction are tested using a distinctive data set. Using principal components analysis five distinct measures of workers satisfaction, and the factors that determine each one are examined. The data set, covering three low-wage service sectors,...

This paper uses data sources from England with the unique capacity to measure distances between home addresses and education institutions, to investigate, for the first time, the effect that such distance has on an individual’s post-compulsory education participation decision. The results...