International Journal of Manpower: Volume 24 Issue 7

Introduction Personnel economics: theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence

Jean‐Louis Rullière, Marie‐Claire Villeval

Introduces the special issue on personnel economics and outlines the themes discussed in the papers contained within.

An investigation into the role of human capital competences and their pay‐off

Hans Heijke, Christoph Meng, Ger Ramaekers

In this paper, the role of three different types of competences in the labour market for higher education graduates is investigated. The article distinguishes discipline‐specific…

Returns to tenure, firm‐specific human capital and worker heterogeneity

Paul Bingley, Niels Westergaard‐Nielsen

Workers with longer job tenure are paid more, on average, than those with shorter tenure. This paper re‐opens the debate about whether individual financial returns to tenure are…

On the sensitivity of returns to seniority to the measurement of earnings

Arnaud Lefranc

This paper examines the incidence of measurement error in wage data on the estimation of returns to seniority. Earnings surveys collect wage data through questions pertaining to…

Careers and wages within large firms: evidence from a matched employer‐employee data set

Francisco Lima, Pedro Telhado Pereira

The relationship between the workers' career and wages is studied using a longitudinal sample of firms. The analysis shows that the interactions of human capital attributes with…

An analysis of the theory of biased contests in an organisational setting

Tim Barmby, Sarah Bridges

This paper uses personnel data gathered from a large financial sector firm to examine the idea of biased contests. The pattern of scores attained by individual workers in…

Job assignment and bandit problems

Irene Valsecchi

The paper is concerned with dynamic job assignment when observed performance is an imperfect signal of the worker's type. When the rate of learning from past performance depends…

Ostracism in work teams: a public good experiment

David Masclet

This paper provides an experimental examination of the effects of ostracism on cooperation. Ostracism is one of the most radical forms of peer pressure. More generally, ostracism…