This paper analyzes the career progression of skilled and unskilled workers, with a focus on how careers are affected by economic downturns, and whether formal skills, acquired early on, are able to shield workers from the effect of recessions. We estimate a dynamic life-cycle model of education choice, labor supply and wage progression using detailed administrative data for Germany for numerou...

This paper develops a North-South trade model in which the South produces food and the North produces both food and a high-tech good. Food production is undertaken by unskilled workers while the high-tech product is made only by horizontally differentiated skilled workers. Due to the possibility of a peergroup effect, we allow the unskilled workers in the North to be equally or more productive ...

This paper presents a multi-objective Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm for worker assignment and mixed-model assembly line balancing problem when task times depend on the worker’s skill level. The objectives of this model are minimization of the number of stations (equivalent to the maximization of the weighted line efficiency), minimization of the weighted smoothness index and minim...

1) This argument is used by Kettunen (1994) is his job competition model. 2) This is corroborated by the fact that particularly in the lower segment of the labour market over-schooling occurs to a large extent. For the Netherlands this is documented in Goort and Maasen-Van den Brink (1996) and Oosterbeek and Webbink (1996). 3) The implied crowding out effect — or as Dreze and Malinvaud (1993) p...

In this paper, we construct a simple model based on heterogeneity in workers’ productivity and homogeneity in their working schedules. This simple model can generate unemployment, even if wages adjust instantaneously, firms are perfectly competitive, and firms can perfectly observe workers’ productivity and effort. In our model, it is optimal for low-skilled workers to be unemployed because, on...

This paper aims at explaining unemployment persistence in Spain by the so–called “ladder” e¤ect. This arises when high-skilled workers who do not ...nd a job corresponding to their skill accept jobs which previously were occupied by less quali...ed sta¤. We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model, in which two types of workers — characterized by their level of formal education — coexist on ...

In this article we assume two levels of skills and two classes of goods, one produced with a technology requiring high skills, the other produced with a technology that can be operated by both low and high skilled workers. Our model generates two distinct labour market regimes. In one regime we show technical change can be the cause of wage divergence between skilled and unskilled workers. This...

South Africa simultaneously lost more than 890,000 jobs and increased the number of skilled workers from 1989 to 1999. We argue this is the consequence of well-documented acute apartheidera distortions which led to a current coordination failure where (i) firms are locked into a mostly skill-intensive technology where they have very little demand for semi-skilled and unskilled labor, and (ii) t...

today, the real problem in iran is a supply and demand problem in all aspects of the economy. from skilled and semi- skilled manapower (ssm) perspective, supply and demand are repidly changing but in opposite directions (ellig, 1990). on the demand side, the emphasis is on a skilled and semi- skilled workforce, but on the supply side, entrylevel workers are high school graduates who are functio...