This paper generalizes Nagar's (1959) approximation to the finite sample mean squared error (MSE) of the instrumental variables (IV) estimator to the case in which the errors possess an elliptical distribution whose moments exist up to infinite order. This allows for types of excess kurtosis...

This empirical paper investigates skill formation in the youth labour market. Using event-history data collected from the administrative records of Lancashire Careers Service, we model "training preferences" formed at school by young people and "training destinations", ie the occupation of the...

Recent policy debate in Europe suggests that a shorter workweek will lead to more jobs (worksharing). We derive and estimate a model where the firm employs two types of workers, some working overtime, the rest standard hours. Worksharing is not always a prediction of the theory. Using German...

In the empirical literature on assortative matching using linked employer-employee data, unobserved worker quality appears to be "negatively" correlated with unobserved firm quality. We show that this can be caused by standard estimation error. We develop formulae that show that the estimated...

This paper provides the first estimates of the determinants of the duration of employer search in the UK. We model duration until a vacancy is either successfully filled or withdrawn from the market. The econometric techniques deal with multiple vacancies and unobserved heterogeneity (dependent...

Positive assortative matching implies that high productivity workers and firms match together. However, there is almost no evidence of a positive correlation between the worker and firm contributions in two-way fixed-effects wage equations. This could be the result of a bias caused by standard...

Using data from the first fourteen waves of the British Household Panel Survey, we estimate a discrete duration model of interregional migration in Great Britain. By exploiting retrospective information on residency we control for late entry as well as unobserved heterogeneity. We find...

In the empirical literature on the estimation of firm and worker heterogeneity using linked employer-employee data, unobserved worker quality appears to be negatively correlated with unobserved firm quality. We investigate the possibility that this is simply caused by standard estimation error...