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...

We assess the relevance of formal education on the productivity of the self-employed and distinguish between opportunity entrepreneurs, who voluntarily pursue a business opportunity, and necessity entrepreneurs, who lack alternative employment options. We expect differences in the returns to...

This paper uses German linked employer-employee data in order to estimate the impact of intra-firm wage dispersion on the probability that firms pay for continuous training. About half of all firms in the estimation sample cover all direct and indirect training costs, which contradicts the...

Trends in compensation and job quality. What do we really know about changes in wage inequality? / Thomas Lemieux ; comment: Lawrence F. Katz -- Recent trends in compensation inequality / Brooks Pierce ; comment: Daniel S. Hamermesh -- Are the new jobs good jobs? / Katharine G. Abraham and James...

This paper presents an analytical setup that makes predictions for the relationships between firm and occupation specific human capital and job switches. The predictions are then tested using the task based approach. The results, based on data for Germany, show that the degree to which firm...