Ship jumping in foreign ports was widespread throughout the age of sail. Desertion by seamen was illegal, it occurred abroad, and men who deserted only seldom returned home. We analyse desertion quantitatively and link it to the broader question of quit behaviour and labour turnover. Though the...

This study analyses the impacts of a technological change (the steam engine) on wage premiums. Using historical employer–employee panel data, we found that steam technology had both new skill-demanding and skill-replacing aspects. The former manifested itself as an increase in the demand for...

This study demonstrates that a stochastic frontier approach applied to regional level data offers a convenient and interesting method to examine how regional differences in matching efficiency and structural factors contribute to aggregate unemployment. The study reveals notable and temporally...

In this paper we apply a stochastic frontier approach to examine how matching efficiency and regional differences in structural factors contribute to regional and aggregate unemployment. Our results suggest that there would be a substantial decline in aggregate unemployment if (i) all local...