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This paper investigates the relative remuneration of migrants and German nationals in paid employment in pre‐unification Germany. Using microdata it shows that migrants typically earn higher wages than comparable German nationals. The paper also shows the distinction between genders and skill levels to be crucial in the determination of wage gaps. Wage gaps are decomposed in the standard Oaxaca‐Blinder way and their development is examined using counterfactual analysis. The paper also shows that conventionally defined wage discrimination works in favour of migrants. Counterfactuals show that, largely, the remunerative advantage of migrants survived the 1981‐1983 recession. However, when employment developments are considered, a much bleaker picture arises. The 1981‐1983 recession destroyed jobs that have been traditionally occupied by migrants (manual and skilled jobs). Post‐recession restructuring generated jobs that went almost exclusively to German nationals (salaried jobs).

Introduces a collection of papers originally presented at the 79th Applied Econometrics Association Conference which was organised with the specific aim of stimulating discussion on the “econometrics of wages”. Topics of particular focus include gender wage gaps and wage discrimination. The papers provide insight into the magnitude and sources of gender, racial and sexual orientation earnings inequalities.

The study investigates persistence of individuals' labour market activity with a focus on examining whether and to what extent there is genuine state dependence in six labour market states: not-in-labour-force, unemployment, self-employment, casual employment, fixed term contracts, and ongoing employment, and how the persistence and genuine state dependence of the labour market states change with education levels.

A dynamic multinomial logit model that accounts for observed and unobserved individual heterogeneity is estimated, using the first 19 waves of the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey.

While observed and unobserved individual heterogeneity plays an important role in the persistence of each of the labour market states examined, genuine state dependence is found to be present for all the states. It is also found that the persistence and genuine state dependence of unemployment is larger among those with a low education attainment than among those with higher education.

The existence of genuine state dependence of labour market states calls for early interventions to prevent people from losing jobs.

Earlier studies often focus on persistence of a particular labour market state such as unemployment, while this study examines the persistence simultaneously of six labour market states.

This paper uses data from the Cedefop European Skills and Jobs survey (ESJS) (Cedefop, 2014, ESJS microdata are Cedefop copyright and are reproduced with the permission of Cedefop. Further information is available at Cedefop, 2015), a new international dataset on skill mismatch of adult workers in 28 EU countries, to decompose the wage penalty of overeducated workers. The ESJ survey allows for integration of a rich set of variables in the estimation of the effect of overeducation on earnings, such as individuals’ job search motives and the skill needs of their jobs. Oaxaca decomposition techniques are employed to uncover the extent to which the earnings penalties of overeducated workers can be attributed to either (i) individual human capital attributes, (ii) job characteristics, (iii) information asymmetries, (iv) compensating job attributes, or (iv) assignment to jobs with different skill needs. Differences in human capital and job-skill requirements are important factors in explaining the wage premium. It is found that asymmetry of information accounts for a significant part of the overeducation wage penalty of tertiary education graduates, whereas job characteristics and the low skill content of their jobs can explain most of the wage gap for medium-qualified employees. Little evidence is found in favor of equilibrium theories of compensating wage differentials and career mobility. Accepting that much remains to be learned with regards to the drivers of overeducation, this paper provides evidence in support of the need for customized policy responses to tackle overeducation.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the factors that influence promotions of medical staff from registrar to consultant in the Scottish NHS.

The paper addresses the question of what determines the incidence of promotion, concentrating on the impact of experience, effort and the choice of specialty in promotion outcomes. A unique panel data set is used that contains individual level information on all NHS hospital doctors in Scotland from 1991 to 2000. Probabilities of promotion are decomposed by specialty into the part attributable to the mean characteristics of the doctors in each specialty and the effect of belonging to a specialty itself.

The paper estimates a panel model of promotion and identifies specialty effects on promotion. Effort in the two years before promotion is shown to have an influence on promotion probabilities. Specialties are found to exhibit considerable differences in their rate of promotion over and above the differences explained by the characteristics of the doctors in them.

The paper examines the promotion of medical staff from registrar to consultant in the Scottish NHS during the 1990s. The paper concentrates on the impact of experience, effort and medical specialty on the probability of promotion.