This paper examines the evolution of the returns to education in Portugal over the 1980s and early 1990s. The main findings indicate that the returns to education have increased, particularly after joining the European Union in 1986. Since this occurred along with an increase in the level of...

We replicate Shaw (J Labor Econ 14(4):626–653, <CitationRef CitationID="CR20">1996</CitationRef>) who found that individual wage growth is higher for individuals with greater preference for risk taking. Expanding her dataset with more American observations and data for Germany, Spain, and Italy, we find evidence that risk attitudes are...</citationref>

We analyse the information in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles to characterize the structure of labour demand. Two dimensions, an intellectual factor and a dexterity factor, capture two-thirds of the variance in job requirements; the remaining (co-)variance cannot be easily structured....

In the Netherlands auditors can be trained in a part-time educational track in which students combine working and studying or in a full-time educational track. The former training is relatively firm-specific whereas the latter training is relatively general. Applying human capital theory, we...

We use data from Germany, The Netherlands, Portugal and Spain to test for the effect of earnings variation on individual earnings. We replicate estimates for the USA and find that the variance of earnings in an occupation affects individual wages positively while the skewness of earnings has a...