Results

CEP discussion paper

Universities, new tasks, and the rise of services

Structural transformation from manufacturing to services varies sharply across US regions. We document that regions with universities, especially highly ranked research institutions, experience faster growth in high-skil...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Returns to green tasks in Europe: evidence from online job vacancies

There is growing evidence that green jobs have higher skill requirements, but whether they offer sufficient wage incentives to encourage workers to acquire those skills remains unclear. We study the green wage premium an...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Capital-skill complementarity in firms and in the aggregate economy

We study capital-skill complementarity in a multi-sector framework featuring firm-specific, multi-factor production functions. We characterize the elasticity of the skill premium to the price of capital equipment in term...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Paternity leave and child development

We study the effect of paternity leave on early child development. We collect survey data on 5,000 children under age six in Spain and exploit several extensions of paternity leave that took place between 2017 and 2021. ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade, skills and productivity

We examine how firms adjust their production and technology in response to exogenous trade shocks. We develop a model in which revenue TFP can be distinguished from quantity TFP, and where skill upgrading is explicitly e...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Tracking the skills behind the AI boom: Evidence from 14 OECD countries

As artificial intelligence rapidly reshapes economies and societies, companies are seeking professionals with AI-related skills. This column uses data from online job postings to explore changes in the demand for these p...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Firm-level technological change and skill demand

We quantify the contribution of firm-level technological change to skill demand and aggregate inequality in the presence of imperfect competition in the labor market. We show that skill-biased technological change increa...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Human Resources:

The urban wage premium in imperfect labor markets

Using administrative data for West Germany, this paper investigates whether part of the urban wage premium stems from fierce competition in thick labour markets. We first establish that employers possess less wage-settin...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Dream jobs

Understanding why certain jobs are `better? than others and what implications they have for a worker?s career is clearly an important but still relatively unexplored question. We provide both a theoretical framework and ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The innovation premium to soft skills in low-skilled occupations

Matched employee-employer data from the UK are used to analyze the wage premium to working in an innovative firm. We find that firms that are more R&D intensive pay higher wages on average, and this is particularly true ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Firm size, productivity and pay in today's service economy

The evidence that bigger firms pay higher wages and have higher productivity is based mainly on manufacturing, which is only a small share of today's economy. Giuseppe Berlingieri, Sara Calligaris and Chiara Criscuolo re...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The urban wage premium in imperfect labour markets

Using administrative data for West Germany, this paper investigates whether part of the urban wage premium stems from fierce competition in thick labour markets. We first establish that employers possess less wage-settin...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The productivity-wage premium: does size still matter in a service economy?

Ever since Moore (1911) a large empirical and theoretical literature has established the existence of a firm size-wage premium. At the same time, a second regularity in empirical work, linking size and productivity, has ...Read more...

Journal article

AEA Papers and Proceedings:

The productivity-wage premium: does size still matter in a service economy?

The literature has established two robust stylized facts: (i) the existence of a firm size-wage premium and (ii) a positive relationship between firm size and productivity. However, the existing evidence is mainly based ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The productivity slowdown and the declining labor share: a neoclassical exploration

We explore the possibility that a global productivity slowdown is responsible for the widespread decline in the labor share of national income. In a neoclassical growth model with endogenous human capital accumulation a ...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Balanced growth despite uzawa

The evidence for the United States points to balanced growth despite falling investment-good prices and a less-than-unitary elasticity of substitution between capital and labor. This is inconsistent with the Uzawa Growth...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Urban Economics:

Sorting and agglomeration economies in French economics departments

Are agglomeration and peer effects at stake in academic research? To tackle this question, we study how departments? characteristics affect the quantity and quality of academics? publications in economics in France, cont...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Rethinking deindustrialization

Manufacturing in high-income countries is on the decline and Denmark is no exception. Manufacturing employment and the number of firms have been shrinking as a share of the total and in absolute levels. This paper uses a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Balanced growth despite Uzawa

Evidence for the United States suggests balanced growth despite falling investment-good prices and less than unitary elasticity of substitution between capital and labor. This is inconsistent with the Uzawa Growth Theore...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Locus of control and its intergenerational implications for early childhood skill formation

We propose a model in which parents have a subjective belief about the impact of their investment on the early skill formation of their children. This subjective belief is determined in part by locus of control (LOC), i....Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economics and Statistics:

Has ICT polarized skill demand? Evidence from eleven countries over twenty-five years

We test the hypothesis that information and communication technologies (ICT) polarize labor markets by increasing demand for the highly educated at the expense of the middle educated, with little effect on low-educated w...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Does school spending matter?

Increases in resources for schools are typically more effective in disadvantaged schools and for disadvantaged pupils. That is one of the many findings of a review by Steve Gibbons and Sandra McNally of the research evid...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The effects of resources across school phases: a summary of recent evidence

This report provides an overview and discussion of the past decade of academic evidence on the causal effects of resources in schooling on students? outcomes. Early evidence lacked good strategies for estimating the effe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A question of degree: The effects of degree class on labor market outcomes

How does measured performance at university affect labor market outcomes? We show that degree class - a coarse measure of student performance used in the UK - causally affects graduates' industry and hence expected wages...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

The Urban Wage Growth Premium: Sorting or Learning?

This paper is concerned with the urban wage premium and addresses two central issues about which the field has not yet reached a consensus. First, the extent to which sorting of high ability individuals into urban areas ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Urban schools: does money make a difference?

This research paper is motivated by a long tail at the bottom of the educational distribution, educational inequality between those from high and low socio-economic groups and the question as to what role an increase in ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Assignment Reversals: Trade, Skill Allocation and Wage Inequality

Understanding the allocation of skilled labor across industries is necessary to explain inter-industry wage differences and the effect of trade on wages. This paper develops a multi-sector assignment model with both hete...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Team performance and the optimal spread of talent

Alex Bryson and colleagues use US baseball data to investigate whether performance suffers if there is too wide a gap between the skills of a team's stars and the rest....Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Import Competition from and Outsourcing to China: A Curse or Blessing for Firms?

We use Belgian manufacturing firm-level data over the period 1996- 2007 to analyze the impact of imports from different origins on firm growth, exit, and skill upgrading. For this purpose we use both industry-level and f...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Heterogeneous Worker Ability and Team-Based Production: Evidence from Major League Baseball, 1920-2009

A detailed longitudinal dataset is assembled containing annual performance and biographical data for every player over the entire history of professional major league baseball. The data are then aggregated to the team le...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Growth of Extended 'Entry Tournaments' and the Decline of Institutionalised Occupational Labour Markets in Britain

In recent years, British labour markets have been characterised by a decline of institutional regulation of entry routes into many occupations and internal labour markets. This paper examines this change by comparing occ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Has ICT Polarized Skill Demand? Evidence from Eleven Countries over 25 Years

OECD labor markets have become more ?polarized? with employment in the middle of the skill distribution falling relative to the top and (in recent years) also the bottom of the skill distribution. We test the hypothesis ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Returns to Scarce Talent: Footedness and Player Remuneration in European Soccer

We investigate the salary returns to the ability to play football with both feet. The majority of footballers are predominantly right footed. Using two data sets, a cross-section of footballers in the five main European ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Educational Returns, Ability Composition and Cohort Effects: Theory and Evidence for Cohorts of Early-Career UK Graduates

An increase over time in the proportion of young people obtaining a degree is likely to impact on the relative ability compositions (i) of graduates and non-graduates and (ii) across graduates with different classes of d...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade, Technology Adoption and Wage Inequalities: Theory and Evidence

This paper develops a model of trade that features heterogeneous firms, technology choice and different types of skilled labor in a general equilibrium framework. Its main contribution is to explain the impact of trade i...Read more...

Manpower Human Resource Lab paper

Overqualification, Job Dissatisfaction and Increasing Dispersion in the Returns to Graduate Education

Increasing dispersion in the returns to graduate education is found, using quantile regression. This trend is related to rising overqualification. We distinguish between and validate measures of ?Real? and ?Formal? overq...Read more...

Manpower Human Resource Lab paper

Leeway for the Loyal: A Model of Employee Discretion

This paper examines the factors underlying task discretion from an economist?s perspective. It argues that the key axis for understanding discretion is the trade-off between the positive effects of discretion on potentia...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Effect of Trade on the Demand for Skill - Evidence from the Interstate Highway System

Since changes in trade openness are typically confounded with other factors, it has been difficult to identify the labor market consequences of increased international trade. The advent of the United States Interstate Hi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Product Market Competition Returns to Skill and Wage Inequality

This paper shows that increasing product market competition can have a direct impact on the employment relationship and on wage inequality. I develop a simple model in which an increase in product market competition incr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Self Selection of Migrant Workers Revisited

Work of low-skilled migrant workers from developing countries in developed economies is a growing phenomenon and a key political and economic issue. An extensive literature has found (for the most part) that these worker...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Union Wage Premium in the US and the UK

This paper presents evidence of both counter-cyclical and secular decline in the union membership wage premiu m in the US and the UK over the last couple of decades. The premium has fallen for most groups of workers, the...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Union Membership Wage Premium: An Analysis Using Propensity Score Matching

This paper estimates the size of the union membership wage premium by comparing wage outcomes for unionised workers with 'matched' non-unionised workers. The method assumes selection on observables. For this identifyin...Read more...