Some recent theories of human capital investments show that firms could be interested in paying for the general training of their workers. However, when search costs are low because there is a large availability of skilled workers on the market (that is, when the skilled unemployment/vacancy...

In imperfectly competitive labor markets returns to skills are lower than their productivity and educational standards may play an important role in stimulating students to provide effort. We propose a principal-agent model to analyze the determinants of student effort and the setting of...

We use a matched employer-employee dataset covering the universe of employees in the Italian private sector to compare labor market outcomes for mothers and fathers during the pandemic. We find that mothers experienced a larger penalty in terms of reduced labor market earnings compared to...