Besides other determinants environmental regulation, institutions like environmental agencies and social customs lead to a demand for environmental goods and services. On the basis of the public choice theory it can be shown that environmental regulation is endogenous and can be influenced by...

Drawing on human capital theory, strategy scholars have emphasized firm-specific human capital as a source of sustained competitive advantage. In this study, we begin to unpack the micro-foundations of firm-specific human capital by theoretically and empirically exploring when employees perceive...

How does employer status benefit firms in the market for general human capital? On the one hand, high status employers are better able to attract workers, who value the signal of ability that employment at those firms provides. On the other hand, that same signal can help workers bid up wages...

Agriculture is increasingly becoming the preserve of women has important implications for policy. Agriculture policy has been largely blind. In order to formulate policy that is sensitive to women’s roles and needs in agriculture, it is first of all necessary to improve the measurement of...

This paper studies the willingness to become an entrepreneur depending on an individual's composition of human and social capital. Our theoretical analysis is an application and extension of Lazear's (2005) jack-of-all-trades theory. Our primary implication is that it is not individuals with a...

West Germany's Employment Promotion Act of 1985 facilitated the use of fixed-term contracts and increased the number of dismissals above which the employer is required to establish a "social plan" (involving severance payments). I assess the effect of this reduction in "firing costs" on...

The United States remains the only OECD nation without national paid maternity leave. This paper exploits changes in paid maternity leave offered by one of the United States’ largest employers, the U.S. Department of Defense. Since 2015, the Marine Corps has shifted their policy from six to 18...

In this paper, we use 1991-2005 panel data on the unemployed, vacancies, inflow into unemployment, and outflow from unemployment in five former communist economies and in the western part of Germany (a benchmark western economy) to examine the evolution of unemployment together with that of...

This paper reviews the development of temporary agency work after its deregulation in the context of the so-called Hartz reforms in Germany. The new role of agency work emerges from its enormous growth after deregulation, the intense use of agency work by big stock-listed companies and upcoming...

In this paper we study the occupational progress and earnings attainment of immigrants in Germany over time and compare them to native Germans. Our analysis is guided by the human capital and segmented labor market theories. To assess the separate effects of occupational segmentation and...