Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate empirically the relationship between workforce age, wage and productivity at the firm level. Design/methodology/approach – Panel data techniques are applied to Belgian data on private sector workers and firms during 1999‐2006. Findings –...

The paper explores the link between different institutional features of minimum wage systems and the minimum wage bite. We notably address the striking absence of studies on sectoral-level minima and exploit unique data covering 17 European countries and information from more than 1100...

Different empirical studies suggest that the structure of employment in the U.S. and Great Britain tends to polarise into good and bad jobs. We provide updated evidence that polarisation also occurred in Germany since the mid-1980s until 2008. Using representative panel data, we show that this...

We estimate the impact of education on productivity, wage costs and productivity-wage gaps (i.e. profits) using Belgian linked panel data. Findings highlight that educational credentials have a stronger impact on productivity than on wage costs. Firms' profitability is found to rise when lower...

This paper is one of the first to use employer-employee data on wages and labor productivity to measure discrimination against immigrants. We build on an identification strategy proposed by Bartolucci (Ind Labor Relat Rev 67(4):1166-1202, 2014) and address firm fixed effects and endogeneity...

We provide first evidence regarding the direct impact of educational mismatch on firm productivity. To do so, we rely on representative linked employer-employee panel data for Belgium covering the period 1999-2006. Controlling for simultaneity issues, time-invariant unobserved workplace...

We provide first evidence regarding the direct effect of educational norms and educational mismatch on the bottom line of firms across work environments. To do so, we use rich Belgian linked employer-employee panel data, rely on the methodological approach pioneered by Hellerstein et al. (1999),...

Measuring the economic impact of coworkers from different countries of origin sparked intense scrutiny in labor economics, albeit with an uncomfortable methodological limitation. Most attempts involved metrics that eliminate most of the economically relevant distances among different countries...

This paper examines the relationship between institutions and the remuneration of different jobs by comparing the German and Belgian labour markets with respect to a typology of institutions (social representations, norms, conventions, legislation, and organisations). The observed institutional...