Europe’s labor is not competitiveness taking unemployment as the relevant indicator. The paper looks at other indicators such as job creation, productivity and unit labor costs and skills. It analyzes the reasons for the lack of competitiveness including a low degree of wage differentiation,...

The relationship between ageing and skills is becoming an important policy issue, not least in the context of population ageing. Data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) will potentially add considerably to the understanding of the relationship...

This paper presents new empirical evidence about the wage gap between union and nonunion workers in Brazil. In principle, due to the rules governing union organization/mobilization, no one should rationally expect such gap. However, as this paper reveals, there is empirical evidence of its...

This paper presents new empirical evidence about the wage gap between union and nonunion workers in Brazil. In principle, due to the rules governing union organization/mobilization, no one should rationally expect such gap. But, as this paper reveals, there is empirical evidence of its existence...

This paper considers a communication network characterized by an endogenous architecture and an imperfect transmission of information as in Bala and Goyal (2000). We propose a similar network's model with the difference that it is characterized by an endogenous rate of information decay....

Some have observed that individuals perform worse after being promoted. The Peter Principle, which states that people are promoted to their level of incompetence, suggests that something is fundamentally misaligned in the promotion process. This view is unnecessary and inconsistent with the...

Rising income inequality is an anglo Saxon problem. For most of the other OECD countries, earnings dispersion is rather persistent. Vertical mobility is to be taken into account. The paper also looks at the relationship of income inequality, growth and employment. It elaborates the point that...

Due to incomplete contracts, efficiency of an organization depends on willingness of individuals to take non-selfish actions, e.g., cooperate when there is no incentive to do so, or punish inefficient actions by others. Organizations also constitute a social boundary, or group. We investigate...

This paper links the two nascent economic literatures on social networks and cultural assimilation by investigating the evolution of population attributes in a simple model where agents are influenced by their acquaintances. The main conclusion of the analysis is that attributes converge to a...