A more market-oriented labor market has emerged in China in the past twenty years with growing importance of the urban private sector, as state-owned enterprises have downsized. Despite the progress on reforms, a sizable surplus of labor still exists in the rural sector and state-owned...

Italy’s 2008 Article IV Consultation describes the country's economic developments and policies. Output has been projected to contract by about ½ percent in 2008 and 1 percent in 2009, with risks tilted to the downside, linked to a further slowing of global growth and falling consumer...

Using data on German university graduates, this paper analyzes wage differentials by field of study at labor market entry and five to six years later. At both points in time, graduates from Arts and Humanities have lower average monthly wages compared to other fields of study. Blinder-Oaxaca...

This study provides strong evidence for an increase in wage inequality induced by skillbiased technological change in the UK manufacturing industry between 1991 and 2006. Using individual level data from the BHPS and industry level data from the OECD, wage regressions are estimated which...

This study estimates separate selectivity bias corrected wage equations for formal and informal workers in rural and urban Mexico using data from the Mexican Family Life Survey (MxFLS). We control for diff erent potential selection patterns using Probit and Multinominal logit models in the fi...

This paper investigates the transferability of human capital across countries and the contribution of imperfect human capital portability to the explanation of the immigrant-native wage gap. Using data for West Germany, our results reveal that, overall, education and labor market experience...

This study analyzes the relationship of individual risk attitudes and occupational sorting with respect to occupational earnings risk. By using the German Mikrozensus, a precise measure for earnings risk is computed as the occupation-wide standard deviation of wages. Following the procedure...

Using data for the 1990’s, this paper examines the role of sheepskin effects in the returns to education for Japan. Our estimation results indicate that sheepskin effects explain about 50% of the total returns to schooling. We further find that sheepskin effect are only important for workers...

We analyse wage differentials between Higher Education graduates in the UK, differentiating between polytechnic and university graduates. Polytechnic graduates earned on average lower wages than university graduates prior to the UK Further and Higher Education Act of 1992. The reform changed the...