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Gender differences in competitiveness have been hypothesized as a potential explanation for gender differences in education and labor market outcomes. We examine the predictive power of a standard laboratory experimental measure of competitiveness for the later important choice of academic track of secondary school students in the Netherlands. Although boys and girls display similar levels of academic ability, boys choose substantially more prestigious academic tracks, where more prestigious tracks are more math- and science-intensive. Our experimental measure shows that boys are also substantially more competitive than girls. We find that competitiveness is strongly positively correlated with choosing more prestigious academic tracks even conditional on academic ability. Most important, we find that the gender difference in competitiveness accounts for a substantial portion (about 20%) of the gender difference in track choice.

In research on fatherhood premiums and motherhood penalties in career-related outcomes, employers' discriminatory behaviours are often argued to constitute a possible explanation for observed gender gaps. However, there is as yet no conclusive evidence of such discrimination. Utilizing a field experiment design, we test (i) whether job applicants are subject to recruitment discrimination on the basis of their gender and parenthood status, and (ii) whether discrimination by gender and parenthood is conditional on the qualifications required by the job applied for. We applied for 2,144 jobs in the Swedish labour market, randomly assigning gender and parenthood status to fictitious job applicants. Based on the rate of callbacks, we do not find that employers practise systematic recruitment discrimination on the basis of the job applicants' gender or parental status, neither in relation to less qualified nor more highly qualified jobs.

A recurring question in public and scientific debates is whether occupation-specific skills enhance labor market outcomes. Is it beneficial to have an educational degree that is linked to only one or a small set of occupations? To answer this question, we generalize existing models of the effects of (mis)match between education and occupation on labor market outcomes. Specifically, we incorporate the structural effects of linkage strength between school and work, which vary considerably across industrialized countries. In an analysis of France, Germany, and the United States, we find that workers have higher earnings when they are in occupations that match their educational level and field of study, but the size of this earnings boost depends on the clarity and strength of the pathway between their educational credential and the labor market. The earnings premium associated with a good occupational match is larger in countries where the credential has a stronger link to the labor market, but the penalty for a mismatch is also greater in such countries. Moreover, strong linkage reduces unemployment risk. These findings add nuance to often-made arguments that countries with loosely structured educational systems have more flexible labor markets and produce better labor market outcomes for workers. An institutional environment that promotes strong school-to-work pathways appears to be an effective strategy for providing workers with secure, wellpaying jobs.

Millions of workers are employed in positions that deviate from the full-time, standard employment relationship or work in jobs that are mismatched with their skills, education, or experience. Yet, little is known about how employers evaluate workers who have experienced these employment arrangements, limiting our knowledge about how part-time work, temporary agency employment, and skills underutilization affect workers' labor market opportunities. Drawing on original field and survey experiment data, I examine three questions: (1) What are the consequences of having a nonstandard or mismatched employment history for workers' labor market opportunities? (2) Are the effects of nonstandard or mismatched employment histories different for men and women? and (3) What are the mechanisms linking nonstandard or mismatched employment histories to labor market outcomes? The field experiment shows that skills underutilization is as scarring for workers as a year of unemployment, but that there are limited penalties for workers with histories of temporary agency employment. Additionally, although men are penalized for part-time employment histories, women face no penalty for part-time work. The survey experiment reveals that employers' perceptions of workers' competence and commitment mediate these effects. These findings shed light on the consequences of changing employment relations for the distribution of labor market opportunities in the \"new economy.\"

Rent-based accounts of inequality argue that institutionalized barriers to the access to labour market positions create artificial restrictions on the supply of labour and, in turn, generate wages for workers in protected positions in excess of the wages they would receive in a competitive labour market. In this article, we extend this argument to the comparative context, and elaborate a rent-based explanation of between-occupation wage inequality in Germany and the United Kingdom. We test it with new and unique data on four institutionalized sources of closure (educational credentialing, licensure, unionization, and apprenticeships), matched to newly constructed measures of occupational skills and to national labour force survey data. We show that in both countries, between-occupation wage inequality is substantial, and much of it can be traced to variations across occupations in closure and to the positive association between closure and wages. We also show that the prevalence and the payoff to each of the four closure institutions differ across the two countries: Specifically, vocational credentialing and unionization have a particularly high payoff in Germany, while tertiary credentialing and licensure have a particularly high payoff in the United Kingdom. These results have important implications for understanding between-occupation wage inequality and cross-national differences in aggregate levels of wage inequality.

We study employers' perceptions of the value of postsecondary degrees using a field experiment. We randomly assign the sector and selectivity of institutions to fictitious resumes and apply to real vacancy postings for business and health jobs on a large online job board. We find that a business bachelor's degree from a for-profit online institution is 22 percent less likely to receive a callback than one from a nonselective public institution. In applications to health jobs, we find that for-profit credentials receive fewer callbacks unless the job requires an external quality indicator such as an occupational license.

The combined decentralisation of many firms and services and the increasing concentration of traditional public transport services in the main corridors of urban centres have made it more difficult for people to access jobs, in particular when residing outside these prime accessibility areas. This is the first national study within the context of Great Britain to examine whether better public transport job accessibility, modelled at the micro level of individuals, improves employment probabilities for people living in Great Britain. While previous studies have typically concentrated on US metropolitan areas, our study uses British national employment micro datasets to assess which urban and rural areas and population groups would benefit from better public transport services. In an important departure from most standard accessibility methodologies, we computed a public transport job accessibility measure applied nationwide and combined this with individual-level employment probability models for Great Britain. The models were corrected for endogeneity by applying an instrumental variable approach. The study finds that better public transport job accessibility improves individual employment probabilities, in particular in metropolitan areas and smaller cities and towns with lower car ownership rates and in low-income neighbourhoods. It further shows that mainly lower educated groups and young people would benefit from better public transport job accessibility. The findings in this study are important for policymakers in that they imply that, in particular, job seekers who rely on public transport services may benefit from more targeted public policies to improve their accessibility to employment and thereby their social mobility. 众多企业和服务机构的分散化，以及传统公共交通服务日益集中在城市中心的主要走廊， 这两个因素降低了人们所享有的工作可及性，特别是当他们居住在这些交通设施的主要覆 盖区域之外时。这是在英国范围内进行的第一项全国性研究，旨在以个人微观层面为模型 调查更好的公共交通工作可及性是否能提高英国居民的就业概率。以前的研究通常关注美 国大都市地区，但我们的研究使用英国国家就业微观数据集来评估哪些城乡地区和人口群 体将受益于更好的公共交通服务。与大多数标准可及性研究方法的一个重要区别是，我们 计算了一个适用于英国全国的公共交通工作可及性指标，并将其与个人层面的就业概率模 型相结合。我们通过应用工具变量方法对模型进行内生性校正。研究发现，更好的公共交 通工作可及性提高了个人就业概率，特别是在大都市地区、汽车拥有率较低的小城镇、以 及低收入社区。这进一步表明，受益于更好的公共交通就业可及性的主要是受教育程度较 低的群体和年轻人。这项研究的结果对政策制定者很重要，因为这意味着，依赖公共交通 服务的求职者将特别受益于更有针对性的公共政策，这些政策旨在改善他们获得就业的机 会，从而提高他们的社会流动性。

Abstract A large body of empirical research has demonstrated that foreign education is a major cause of ethnic disadvantages in the labor market. However, there are few insights into how these disadvantages of foreign training can be effectively countered. To improve skilled immigrants’ access to positions commensurate with their foreign qualifications, several countries have introduced policies to officially recognize foreign educational credentials. In this study, we examine the extent to which having recognized foreign credentials improves immigrants’ chances of being hired. To identify the causal effect of foreign credential recognition on immigrants’ chances of accessing adequate jobs, we focus on employers’ hiring decisions. Using vignettes, we simulate a hiring process and show randomized profiles of applicants to employers who then rate how likely they are to invite the applicants to a job interview. Our central finding is that having recognized foreign credentials considerably narrows but does not completely close the gap in the hiring chances between foreign- and native-trained applicants. Moreover, we find that the extent to which applicants benefit from foreign credential recognition varies with their occupational experience but not with the quality of the educational system in which they were trained. We conclude that whereas foreign credential recognition is a promising tool to highlight immigrants’ skill potential and reduce the disadvantages of the foreign-trained in the labor market, it hardly harmonizes the hiring chances of native- and foreign-trained applicants.

We measure impacts of entry conditions on labor market outcomes for the US college graduating classes of 1974–2011. A large recession reduces initial earnings by 10%, through full-time work and wages, with small persistent impacts on wages. Those in high-paying majors experience smaller impacts on most labor market outcomes, widening earnings inequality across majors. In the Great Recession, early earnings losses are much larger than predicted given past patterns and the size of the recession. This is partially because the cyclical sensitivity of demand for college graduates has more than doubled. Recession effects also became more evenly distributed across majors.

Recessions lead to short-term job loss, lower happiness, and decreasing income levels. There is growing evidence that workers who first join the labor market during economic downturns suffer from poor job matches that can have sustained detrimental effects on wages and career progressions. This paper uses U.S. and U.K. data to document a more disturbing long-run effect of recessions: young people who leave school during recessions are significantly more likely to lead a life of crime than those entering a buoyant labor market. Thus, crime scars resulting from higher entry-level unemployment rates prove to be long lasting and substantial.