"This article contributes to the ongoing debate on native wage impacts of immigration. I propose a mobile-fixed factor distinction as a framework in which to think about the differential impact of immigration on various labor market groups. Skilled workers are treated as a fixed factor of production since the strong reliance on skill certification in Germany inhibits mobility and shelters from ...

The positive correlations found between computer use and human capital are often interpreted as evidence that the adoption of computers has raised the relative demand for skilled labor, the widely touted skill-biased technological change hypothesis. However, several models argue that the skill intensity of technology is endogenously determined by the relative supply of skilled labor. We use ins...

Skill-Biased Technical Change is a shift in the production technology that favors skilled over unskilled labor by increasing its relative productivity and, therefore, its relative demand. Traditionally, technical change is viewed as factor-neutral. However, the observed rapid rise in the relative wage of skilled workers in conjunction with an upward trend in their relative supply means that rec...

Reasons for Wage Rigidity in Germany This study investigates institutional and economic reasons for downward wage rigidity regarding three occupational skill groups. Based on a survey of 801 firms in Germany and an econometric analysis, we find strong support for explanations based on the effects of labour union contracts and efficiency wages that differ between skill groups. Survey respondents...

People in low socio-economic positions are over-represented in suicide statistics and are at heightened risk for non-fatal suicidal thoughts and behaviours. Few studies have tried to tease out the relationship between individual-level and area-level socio-economic position, however. We used data from Ten to Men (the Australian Longitudinal Study on Male Health) to investigate the relationship b...

Schooling raises individuals' scores on cognitive tests. It also raises individual earnings. What is the connection between these two facts? Many have interpreted the substantial economic returns to schooling as evidence for the importance of cognitive skills as a determinant of individual earnings. But skill enhancement is not the only way schooling a ects earnings. We shall argue that schooli...

Corporate Skills as an Ex-Ante Incentive to R&D Investment Using a balanced panel of 215 Italian manufacturing firms over the 1995-2000 period, this paper investigates the determinants of R&D investment at the level of the firm. While finding further support for the well-established technology-push and demand-pull hypotheses, this study also tests the role of skill endowment in increasing a fir...

Is productivity growth inimical to employment? Canonical economic theory says no, but much recent economic theory says ‘maybe’ — that is, rapid advances in machine capabilities may curtail aggregate labor demand as technology increasingly encroaches on human job tasks. We explore the relationship between productivity growth and employment using countryand industry-level data for 19 countries ov...