workforce

This paper establishes the existence of a previously overlooked relationship between agglomeration and hours worked. Among non-professionals, hours worked decrease with the density of workers in the same occupation. Among professionals, a positive relationship is found.

The authors estimate the speed of income convergence for a sample of 196 European NUTS 2 regions over the period 1985-1999. They propose a two-step procedure, which involves first spatial filtering of the variables to remove the spatial correlation, and application of standard GMM estimators for dynamic panels in a second step. Results show that ignorance of the spatial correlation leads to potentially misleading results.

A survey of 100 businesses in the manufacturing and services sectors in two areas of Greece is used to test empirically the effects of the spatial features of the business-network relationship on firm performance.

The National Science Board examines the current trends of supply and demand for science and engineering skills in the US workforce. They find that national-level action is needed to ensure our country’s capacity in S&E in an increasingly competitive and changing global labor market.

Results of the study suggest that firms which are run by owners that worked for multinationals in the same industry immediately prior to opening up their own firm have higher productivity growth than other domestic firms. This suggests that these entrepreneurs bring with them some of the knowledge accumulated in the multinational which can be usefully employed in the domestic firm.

The authors look at a recent Italian policy designed to foster hiring with open-end rather than with fixed-term contracts. Results indicate that most of the financial support was wasted because of the large dead-weight loss associated to the program.

The authors fiind that trade unions have a rational incentive to oppose the adaption of
labour-saving technology when labour demand is inelastic and unions care
much for employment relative to wages. Findings also indicate that the incentive for technologyopposition is stronger in the more technologically advanced country and in the country with the larger home market, complementing earlier explanations for technological catch-up and leapfrogging.

Using data on 19,000 siblings, the authors investigate whether earnings vary among students who graduated from different colleges in Sweden. The results show that earnings vary significantly among students who have graduated from different colleges.

The authors employ the ‘dartboard approach’ pioneered by Ellison and Glaeser to analyze the spatial concentration of New Economy employment in Germany, the coagglomeration of firms belonging to different sub-sectors of Neuer Markt and the
(intraregional) spillovers between different high tech industries.

The authors use statistical techniques to quantify the effects of school attainment on individual wages, participation rates and employment probabilities in Spain, and to measure the contribution of education to labour productivity at the regional level.