We investigate the effect of broad personality traits - the Big Five - on an individual's decision to become self-employed. In particular, we test an overall indicator of the entrepreneurial personality. Since we find that the level of selfemployment varies considerably across professions, we...

Wages for black and white workers are substantially lower in occupations with a high density of black employees, following standard controls. Such correlations can exist absent discrimination or as a result of discrimination. In wage level equations, the magnitude of the correlation falls...

We use data from Spain to test for an effect of earnings risk and skewness on individual wages. We carry out separate estimation for men, women, public and private sector employees. In accordance with previous evidence for the US we show the existence of a riskreturn trade-off across occupations...

This paper deals with empirical matching functions. The paper is innovative in several ways. First, unlike in most of the existing literature, matching functions are estimated not only on aggregate, but also on disaggregate levels which is unusual due to the scarcity of appropriate data....

We show that controlling for subject of degree explains a significant part of the male/female gender wage differential amongst graduates. Using data from the labour force surveys of the United Kingdom and Germany, we find similar results in these two countries: subject of degree explains about...

This paper provides new evidence on the nature of occupational differences in unemployment dynamics, which is relevant for the debate between the structural or hysteresis hypotheses. We develop a procedure that permits us to test for the presence of a structural break at unknown date. Our...

This paper examines whether the results of the earnings equation developed in the overeducation/required eduation/under-education (ORU) literature are sensitive to whether the usual or reference levels of education are measured using the Realized Matches or Worker Self-Assessment methods. The...

This paper examines the determinants of gross labour flows in a context where modeling the migration decision as a wage-maximizing process may be inadequate due to regional wage rigidities that result from central wage bargaining. In such a context, the framework that has been developed by...

Labour economists typically assume that pay differences between occupations can be explained with variations in productivity. The empirical evidence on the validity of this assumption is surprisingly thin and subject to various potential biases. The authors use matched employer-employee panel...

By analyzing occupational task profiles, an occupational change can be split up into two components: (1) transferability of task portfolios between occupations and (2) change in the value of the occupation-employee match. Extending the task-based approach of Gathmann and Schönberg (2009) by...