educational mismatch work outcomes and entry into entrepreneurship a growing body of research explores how employees organizational context shapes their entrepreneurial activity we add to this work by examining how educational mismatch when a job does not utilize the skills an employee has acquired during education relates to subsequent transitions into entrepreneurship while prior research has focused on mismatch due to labor market frictions workers may also enter mismatches for other reasons such as family obligations or a change in career interests different reasons in turn may relate in distinct ways to wages and job satisfaction and thus to the opportunity costs of entering entrepreneurship moreover mismatch may also affect human capital development including the formation of a broader range of skills that is beneficial in entrepreneurship using longitudinal data from over 25 000 scientists and engineers we document a broad range of reasons for educational mismatch and show that the relationships between educational mismatch and wages job satisfacti

which industry is greener an empirical study of nine industries in oecd countries abstract this study analyzed the relationship between the co2 emissions of different industries and economic growth in oecd countries from 1970 to 2005 we tested an environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis and found that total co2 emissions from nine industries show an n shaped trend instead of an inverted u or monotonic increasing trend with increasing income the ekc hypothesis for sector level co2 emissions was supported in the 1 paper pulp and printing industry 2 wood and wood products industry and 3 construction industry we also found that emissions from coal and oil increase with economic growth in the steel and construction industries in addition the non metallic minerals machinery and transport equipment industries tend to have increased emissions from oil and electricity with economic growth finally the ekc turning point and the relationship between gdp per capita and sectoral co2 emissions differ among industries according to the fuel type used therefore environmental policies for co2 reduction must consider these differences in industrial characteristics

overeducation regional labor markets and spatial flexibility for most workers access to suitable employment is severely restricted by the fact that they look for jobs in the regional labor market rather than the global one in this paper we analyze how macrolevel opportunities regional market characteristics and microlevel restrictions the extent to which job searchers are restricted to the regional market can help to explain the phenomenon of overeducation we use a two step procedure to control selective access to employment the results show that the size of the labor market is an important factor in avoiding overeducation

international trade and energy intensity during european industrialization 1870 1935 the study was conducted in the research project who did the dirty work energy embodied in european and global trade 1800 1970 funded by the swedish research council 421 2013 1110 vetenskapsradet

regional economic growth and human capital the role of over education ramos r surinach j and artis m regional economic growth and human capital the role of over education regional studies this article analyses the link between human capital and regional economic growth in the european union using various indicators of human capital calculated from census microdata it is concluded that the recent economic performance of european regions is associated with an increase in over education in fact measures of educational mismatch seem to be more strongly connected to regional economic performance than do other traditional measures of human capital stock ramos r surinach j and artis m ramos r surinach j et artis m la croissance economique regionale et le capital humain l impact de la sureducation regional studies cet article cherche a analyser le lien entre le capital humain et la croissance economiqu

the school to work transition a cross national perspective school to work patterns and issues are discussed for seven economies france germany japan the netherlands sweden the united kingdom and the united states the emphasis is placed on differences across countries in the current labor market position of young people and recent trends therein along with the institutions that regulate youth education training and employment the power of public policies including labor market deregulation labor market programs vocationalization of education and apprenticeship to improve youth outcomes is discussed drawing on national evaluation literatures evidence of extensive policy failure points up the need to develop nationally appropriate institutions to improve school to work transitions

trade ecologically unequal exchange and colonial legacy the case of france and its former colonies 1962 2015 abstract the role of trade in global environmental change is receiving increasing attention and there is a lively debate about ecologically unequal exchange eue little is known however about the role of colonial legacy for the evolution of physical trade patterns this study provides empirical evidence on the basis of a systematic evaluation of global trade data we quantify in physical and monetary terms the development of trade relations between france its former colonies and the rest the world from the immediate post colonial period until 2015 we use a set of physical trade indicators including physical trade balance and terms of trade to analyse differences in trade patterns and eue the results indicate that colonial ties were very strong in the 1960s but thereafter quickly diminished we find strong evidence for eue between france and its former colonies in the post colonial period and that the colonial factor explains eue between centre and peripheries better than income differences until the 1970s in recent decades colonial legacy increasingly vanished our findings corroborate that socio political factors and in particular colonial legacy play an important role for eue relations and that they deserve more attention in quantitative empirical research on trade

baumol s disease and dematerialization of the economy this paper argues that there is reason to be skeptical about the idea that the transition to a service economy will bring about dematerialization of production and consequent environmental improvement this is because the shift to a service economy is an illusion in terms of real production but is instead generated by the fall in the price of manufacturing goods relative to services which is in turn caused by more rapid productivity growth in manufacturing than in services this argument relies on the insights baumol provided on the nature of the service economy and uses swedish long term data on relative sectoral development as an empirical illustration on the other hand the paper argues that there is reason to be cautiously optimistic that structural change may bring about a greening of growth namely the changes in growth patterns sometimes labeled the third industrial revolution which is connected to the emergence of microelectronics swedish co2 emissions show a decline after 1970 which is mainly explained by a politically driven change in the mix of energy carriers but is also related to the stabilization of energy consumption this energy stabilization was caused by slow growth of the economy in conjunction with substantial declines in energy intensity within industrial sectors and an absence of relative growth of the heavy sectors a growth that had marked the economy between 1870 and 1970 microelectronics have contributed to permanently transforming the swedish industrial sector in a lighter direction reducing energy losses in heavy industries and stabilizing household energy consumption so it appears as if there may be some environmental gains from this development that was initiated in the 1970s but not from relatively more production in the service sector

on the job specific training and efficient screening employment relationships are governed by short term incomplete contracts and typically involve on the job screening and firm specific training this article studies a dynamic employment relationship with these features and identifies a potential conflict between the employer s twin objectives to screen and train the worker when the training technology is quite productive the employer may have to sacrifice from worker performance during the screening process the article thus offers an explanation for why firms may invest suboptimally on training which complements the standard inappropriable rents explanation based on ex post mobility of young employees

the incidence of and returns to overeducation in the uk the 1991 wave of the british household panel survey is used to examine the extent of and the returns to overeducation in the uk about 11 of the workers are overeducated while another 9 are undereducated for their job the results show that the allocation of female workers is more efficient than the allocation of males the probability of being overeducated decreases with work experience but increases with tenure overeducated workers earn less while undereducated workers earn more than correctly allocated workers both the hypothesis that productivity is fully embodied and the hypothesis that productivity is completely job determined are rejected by the data it is found that there are substantial wage gains obtainable from a more efficient allocation of skills over jobs

estimation of substitution possibilities between water and other production inputs the traditional approach to measuring the demand for water by industries relies upon fixed water use coefficients water supply planners base decisions about system expansion partly upon fixed coefficients applied to projected levels of industrial growth among the restrictive assumptions implied by this approach is that producers are generally unresponsive to the relative price of water compared with other factors earlier studies focused on industry by industry assessments of present and potential water use technologies and the possibilities for substituting other productive inputs for water most of these studies are economic engineering in form thompson and young and russell are analyses of the steam electric generating industry and the petroleum refining and petrochemical industry respectively because they used linear programming techniques their results must be interpreted cautiously the flexible functional forms which have become

a mismatch made in heaven a hedonic analysis of overeducation and undereducation in this paper a hedonic pairing process is modeled in which some workers may be overeducated or undereducated as an equilibrium outcome of a dynamic labor market undereducated workers are those whose abilities and training permit them to move into a job with higher qualifications whereas overeducated workers are highly qualified workers who select into lower skill entry level jobs that provide the training or signal necessary for promotion the empirical model shows that these pairing types cannot be directly identified in a cross section since all workers are exactly educated during a portion of their career however pairing types may be imputed by comparing predicted and observed qualifications of the worker and predicted and observed requirements of the firm using a rich cross section and a panel of british working age males to identify the pairing types we confirm the predicted career development patterns with regard to on the job training promotion and wages

daron acemoglu 2005 john bates clark medalist daron acemoglu winner of the 2005 john bates clark medal uses theoretical and empirical analysis to tackle critical issues in a variety of fields in economics including labor economics macroeconomics and political economy his unparalleled combination of originality thoroughness and prolificacy has propelled him to the frontier of each field that he has explored the clark medal committee notes that his work is always motivated by real world questions that arise when facts are difficult to reconcile with existing theory daron focuses on a core set of questions and uses the best tools available to answer them what determines the accumulation of human capital both during formal schooling and on the job how do the implications of labor market frictions depend on the information available to job searchers how do economic incentives affect the type of technological change that we observe why are there such enormous differences in output per worker and total factor productivity across countries

is technical change directed by the supply of skills the case of south korea abstract in a recent contribution acemoglu quarterly journal of economics 113 1998 1055 modelled the effects of an increase in the supply of skills on the skill premium we estimate a model to disentangle the short run substitution effects and the effects of skill biased technical change using industry data for south korea for the period 1974 1998

over education across british regions lenton p over education across british regions regional studies this paper analyses levels of over education and wage returns to education for males across eleven regions of the uk using labour force survey data significant differences are found in the probability of being over educated across regions also differences are found in the return to the correct level of education in each region in each case associated with flexibility of movement between and into particular regions which determines the ease of job matching furthermore evidence is found that after controlling for the level of education acquired there exists a premium to the correct level of education which varies across uk regions lenton p 11 over education lenton p la sureducation a travers les regions e

long term changes in social metabolism and land use in czechoslovakia 1830 2000 an energy transition under changing political regimes abstract industrialisation goes along with sweeping changes in society s interrelations with its environment the transition from an agrarian to an industrial society leads to fundamentally new patterns in social metabolism a process which has been described as socio metabolic transition this paper investigates this transition for the case of the current czech and slovak republics and presents a dataset on the development of key variables related to social metabolism during the last 170 years the dataset includes time series data on the extraction of biomass and fossil fuels energy consumption and land use combining data on bohemia and moravia 1830 1915 with data on czechoslovakia 1918 1992 and the czech and slovak republics 1993 2002 the study covers a period of consecutive political and institutional changes it includes the feudal regime of the late period of the habsburg empire and its disintegration with wwi the short period of the czechoslovak republic in the interwar period the era of a planned economy under a communist regime the collapse of this regime and the subsequent turn towards a market economy and european integration in the 1990s the period was characterized by economic and physical growth it saw a doubling of population and a growth in gdp by a factor 20 domestic energy consumption dec increased by a factor 10 and the share of biomass in dec declined from more than 98 to less than 20 all in all the observed changes closely resemble the characteristic path of the socio metabolic transition as observed in other western european economies major political and economic changes did not result in fundamental alterations of the socio metabolic transition until the mid 20th century the communist era 1945 1989 was characterized by rapid physical growth and changes in the energy and land use system very similar to those of other western european economies in the same period however leading to dec values substantially higher than those of other european countries at around 300 gj cap in the mid 1980s the disturbances caused by the velvet revolution resulted in short term turbulences in social metabolism and structural adaptations and around the year 2000 the czech and slovak republics show biophysical features very similar to those of other western european countries

educational mismatch and promotions to managerial positions a test of the career mobility theory abstractcareer mobility theory suggests that given a certain occupation schooling improves upward mobility in terms of promotion and wage growth we are the first to test the implications of this theory for over and undereducation by means of direct information about promotions to managerial positions using german administrative data entailing an employer reported and hence objective measure of educational requirements we show that overeducated workers are indeed more likely to be promoted and that this career mobility advantage is more pronounced in the early stages of their working lives by contrast undereducated workers are less likely to be promoted to managerial positions moreover in terms of wage growth while overeducated workers benefit more undereducated workers benefit less from promotions than their well matched educational peers altogether these findings strongly support the career mobility theory furthermore by differentiating between internal and external promotions we prov

immigration search and loss of skill this article develops and estimates an on the job search model of the entry of highly skilled immigrants from the former soviet union into the israeli labor market the estimated parameters of the model together with information on the wages of immigrants from earlier waves imply that on average immigrants can expect lifetime earnings to fall short of the lifetime earnings of comparable natives by 57 of this figure 14 percentage points reflect frictions associated with nonemployment and job distribution mismatch and 43 percentage points reflect the gradual adaptation of imported schooling and experience to the local labor market

can the mortensen pissarides model with productivity changes explain u s wage inequality this article examines whether the mortensen pissarides matching model with productivity changes can explain the time pattern of wage inequality the main finding is that the model produces counterfactual results the main source of failure seems to be the exogenous matching function and or the exogenous surplus share neither of which allows firms to use wage policies to direct workers searches

general equilibrium electricity generation technologies and the cost of carbon abatement a structural sensitivity analysis abstract electricity generation is a major contributor to carbon dioxide emissions and abatement in this sector is a key determinant of economy wide regulation costs the complexity of an integrated representation of economic and electricity systems makes simplifying assumptions appealing but there is no evidence in the literature on how important the pitfalls may be the aim of this paper is to provide such evidence drawing on numerical simulations from a suite of partial and general equilibrium models that share common technological features and are calibrated to the same benchmark data we report two basic findings first general equilibrium inter sectoral effects of an economy wide carbon policy are large it follows that assessing abatement potentials and price changes in the electricity sector with a partial equilibrium marshallian demand can only provide a crude approximation of the complex demand side interactions second we provide evidence that widely used top down representations of electricity technologies produce fuel substitution patterns that are inconsistent with bottom up cost data this supports the view that the parametrization of substitution possibilities with highly aggregated production functions is difficult to validate empirically the overall picture that emerges is one of large quantitative and even qualitative differences highlighting the role of key structural assumptions in the interpretation of climate policy projections

integrated water and economic modelling of the impacts of water market instruments on the south african economy a static computable general equilibrium model of south africa is adapted to compare new taxes on water demand by two industries namely forestry and irrigated field crops comparisons are made with respect to both the short and the long run in terms of three target variables namely i the environment ii the economy and iii equity since the taxes on the two industries do not raise the same amount of revenue the target variables are calculated per unit of real government revenue raised by the new taxes also referred to as the marginal excess burdens of the taxes the model results are robust for moderate values of the water elasticity of demand in the two industries in both the long and the short run the tax on irrigated field crops performs better in terms of all three the target variables in the short run in the long run the tax on irrigated filed crops is better in terms of water saving but reduces real gdp and the consumption by poor households

aggregation and the role of energy in the economy methods for investigating the role of energy in the economy involve aggregating different energy flows a variety of methods have been proposed but none has received universal acceptance this paper shows that the method of aggregation has crucial effects on the results of the analysis we review the principal assumptions and methods for aggregating energy flows the basic heat equivalents approach economic approaches using prices or marginal product for aggregation emergy analysis and thermodynamic approaches such as exergy we argue that economic approaches such as the index or marginal product method are superior because they account for differences in quality among fuels we apply various economic approaches in three case studies in the us economy in the first we account for energy quality to assess changes in the energy surplus delivered by the extraction of fossil fuels from 1954 to 1992 the second and third case studies examine the importance of energy quality in evaluating the relation between energy use and gdp first a quality adjusted index of energy consumption is used in an econometric analysis of the causal relation between energy use and gdp from 1947 to 1996 second we account for energy quality in an econometric analysis of the factors that determine changes in the energy gdp ratio from 1947 to 1996 without adjusting for energy quality the results imply that the energy surplus from petroleum extraction is increasing that changes in gdp drive changes in energy use and that gdp has been decoupled from between aggregate energy use all of these conclusions are reversed when we account for changes in energy quality 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

the synthesis of bottom up and top down approaches to climate policy modeling electric power technology detail in a social accounting framework abstract hybrid climate policy simulations have sought to bridge the gap between bottom up engineering and top down macroeconomic models by integrating the former s energy technology detail into the latter s macroeconomic framework construction of hybrid models is complicated by the need to numerically calibrate them to multiple incommensurate sources of economic and engineering data i develop a solution to this problem following howitt s howitt r e 1995 positive mathematical programming american journal of agricultural economics 77 329 342 positive mathematical programming approach using data for the u s i illustrate how the inputs to the electricity sector in a social accounting matrix may be allocated among discrete types of generation so as to be consistent with both technologies input shares from engineering cost estimates and the zero profit and market clearance conditions of the sector s macroeconomic production structure

does education expansion increase intergenerational mobility education expansion may lead to over education where the social connections of parents may exert more significant influence on the return to education of children with the assumption of a positive correlation between return on human capital and parental income in the presence of over education we show that i the expansion of education may cause horizontal inequity in education opportunities and inefficiency in human capital accumulation ii the positive correlation between return on human capital and parental income causes a more persistent intergenerational immobility iii an expansion of education especially higher education leads to more persistent intergenerational immobility

losses and gains to developing countries from the migration of educated workers this paper synthesizes and extends recent research on the new economics of the brain drain in a unified framework the paper shows that while recently identified adverse repercussions of the brain drain exacerbate the long recognized negative impact of the brain drain longer term consequences turn the brain drain into the harbinger of powerful gains these gains have been studied already in recent research or merit attention in future research

overeducation undereducation and the theory of career mobility the theory of career mobility sicherman and galor journal of political economy 98 1 169 92 1990 claims that wage penalties for overeducated workers are compensated by better promotion prospects sicherman journal of labour economics 9 2 101 22 1991 was able to confirm this theory in an empirical study using panel data however the only retest using panel data so far robst eastern economic journal 21 539 50 1995 produced rather ambiguous results in the present paper random effects models to analyse relative wage growth are estimated using data from the german socio economic panel it is found that overeducated workers in germany have markedly lower relative wage growth rates than adequately educated workers the results cast serious doubt on whether the career mobility model is able to explain overeducation in germany the plausibility of the results is supported by the finding that overeducated workers have less access to formal and informal on the job training which is usually foun

the physical economy of france 1830 2015 the history of a parasite abstract this article explores long term trends and patterns of material use in france for a 185 year period it is the first long term study of material flows for france with national and yearly data for most of the period based on a material flow analysis mfa that is fully consistent with current standards of economy wide mfas and covers domestic extraction imports and exports of materials we investigated the evolution of the french metabolism from industrialization to financialized capitalism over the whole period there is a 9 fold increase in domestic material consumption an expansion of material use per capita and a spectacular addition of abiotic resources fossil fuels and minerals to biotic materials using a world ecology framework we exhibit a specific metabolic path that of a state benefiting from successive world systems for its economic development through massive material imports

overeducation job mobility and earnings mobility among holders of first degrees abstractovereducation has been researched extensively for nearly three decades but some major issues in regard to it are still topics of ongoing debate by using a panel data that combines a survey of two cohorts of israeli first degree holders and data from administrative sources on jobs and wages we examine the contribution of job turnover cognitive abilities and continuing graduate studies to the likelihood of overeducation and wage dynamics the study produces four main findings first rapid job switching makes a negative contribution to the increase in employee s wage and there is a negative correlation between two variables an employee s tenure and the number of past employers in the years after the completion of degree studies and the probability of being overeducated second the contribution of the individual s cognitive abilities and quantitative reasoning skills to the likelihood of becoming overeducated is negative third the wages of overeducated employees are some 11 lower and ris

trade off analysis between embodied energy exports and employment creation in china moving towards sustainable consumption in china must factor in the drivers of production china s domestic energy demand is affected not only by domestic demand but also by foreign trade the accounting of energy embodied in china s international trade has attracted much attention in recent years in fact embodied energy imports exports are a part of the normal pattern of economic phenomena occurring through international trade with exports of embodied energy contributing significantly to china s economic development this research suggest that china s net embodied energy exports remained relatively stable before 2002 and then increased dramatically from 73 mtoe in 2002 to 502 mtoe by 2007 with an average annual growth rate of 47 2 over that period the total employment creation reliant on these exports is 191 3 million people including direct employment of 44 1 million people and indirect employment of 147 2 million people in 2007 and the total employment creation increased quickly between 2002 and 2007 with an average annual growth rate of 9 1 the share of employment created by exports in china s total employment increased from 16 5 in 1997 to 18 6 in 2002 and a more dramatic increase can be observed in 2007 of 28 1 the exports oriented sectors in china are energy intensive from the perspective of embodied energy consumption and the energy intensive exports are located in nearly the same sectors as the labor intensive exports china will find it difficult to sustain the trade off in costs due to unemployment if it wishes to reduce embodied energy exports china needs to exercise patience and long term reform to change the current development model because of its large economy and population base

a theory of career mobility this paper analyzes theoretically and empirically the role and significance of occupational mobility in the labor market focusing on individuals careers it provides additional dimensions to the analysis of investment in human capital wage differences across individuals and the relationships among promotions quits and interfirm occupational mobility it is shown that part of the returns to education is in the form of higher probabilities of occupational upgrading within or across firms given an origin occupation schooling increases the likelihood of occupational upgrading furthermore workers who are not promoted despite a high probability of promotion are more likely to quit

an explanation of international differences in education and workplace training abstract we develop a simple search equilibrium model of workplace training and education based on two features first investment in education improves job related learning skills and reduces training costs by firms second firms with vacant skilled job slots can choose between recruitment from the market and training compared to germany and japan the us has both a higher inflow rate into unemployment and a higher efficiency of the matching process while the combined effect of these differences on the share of educated labor is ambiguous the effect on the percentage of firms undertaking workplace training is to unambiguously reduce it

combining bottom up and top down abstract we motivate the formulation of market equilibrium as a mixed complementarity problem which explicitly represents weak inequalities and complementarity between decision variables and equilibrium conditions the complementarity format permits an energy economy model to combine technological detail of a bottom up energy system with a second best characterization of the over all economy our primary objective is pedagogic we first lay out the complementarity features of economic equilibrium and demonstrate how we can integrate bottom up activity analysis into a top down representation of the broader economy we then provide a stylized numerical example of an integrated model within both static and dynamic settings finally we present illustrative applications to three themes figuring prominently on the energy policy agenda of many industrialized countries nuclear phase out green quotas and environmental tax reforms

optimal higher education enrollment and productivity externalities in a two sector model abstract we analyze the optimal share of the skilled workforce over the course of development with two sectors using skilled and unskilled labor respectively and technological spillovers from higher education enrollment productivity in each sector depends on the average quality of workers and the size of the workforce when skill biased technological change prevails this structure of externalities coupled with the endogenous ability sorting of workers may well produce a pattern of overenrollment in early and late stages of development and underenrollment in between our normative analysis is followed by a positive analysis exploring how policy would differ under alternative political objectives

energy intensity developments in 40 major economies structural change or technology improvement this study analyzes energy intensity trends and drivers in 40 major economies using the wiod database a novel harmonized and consistent dataset of input output table time series accompanied by environmental satellite data we use logarithmic mean divisia index decomposition to 1 study trends in global energy intensity between 1995 and 2007 2 attribute efficiency changes to either changes in technology or changes in the structure of the economy and 3 highlight sectoral and regional differences we first show that heterogeneity within each sector across countries is high these general trends within the sectors are dominated by large economies first and foremost the united states in most cases heterogeneity is lower within each country across the different sectors regarding changes of energy intensity at the country level improvements between 1995 and 2007 are largely attributable to technological change while structural change is less important in most countries notable exceptions are japan the united states australia taiwan mexico and brazil where a change in the industry mix was the main driver behind the observed energy intensity reduction

food regimes and their trade links a socio ecological perspective abstract the concept of food regimes has become a prominent theory in political economy we here provide socio ecological underpinning of the food regimes theory and thereby connect it closer to an ecological economics perspective we quantify physical trade with main agricultural commodities between world regions from the mid 19th century to 2016 and ask how trade patterns relate to issues of resource use in particular to land use soil fertility and the energetic basis of agriculture agricultural exports rose from a few million t yr around 1870 to 1 4 billion t yr in 2016 growth in trade and production did not follow a continuous trend periods of accelerated growth alternating with phases of relative stability can be distinguished rather than directed modernization we observe shifts in unequal relations of power physical exchange and environmental pressure between changing centers and peripheries the periods of growth in trade match with the periodization of food regimes we find that regime shifts are closely related to changes in societies energy metabolism in the resource base of agricultural production and also to agro ecological crisis our analysis emphasizes that food regimes not only reflect changes in power relations in the world system but also changes in societies natural relations

growth in global materials use gdp and population during the 20th century the growing industrial metabolism is a major driver of global environmental change we present an assessment of the global use of materials since the beginning of the 20th century based on the conceptual and methodological principles of material flow accounting mfa on the grounds of published statistical data data compilations and estimation procedures for material flows not covered by international statistical sources we compiled a quantitative estimate of annual global extraction of biomass fossil energy carriers metal ores industrial minerals and construction minerals for the period 1900 to 2005 this period covers important phases of global industrialisation and economic growth the paper analyses the observed changes in the overall size and composition of global material flows in relation to the global economy population growth and primary energy consumption we show that during the last century global materials use increased 8 fold humanity currently uses almost 60 billion tons gt of materials per year in particular the period after wwii was characterized by rapid physical growth driven by both population and economic growth within this period there was a shift from the dominance of renewable biomass towards mineral materials materials use increased at a slower pace than the global economy but faster than world population as a consequence material intensity i e the amount of materials required per unit of gdp declined while materials use per capita doubled from 4 6 to 10 3 t cap yr the main material groups show different trajectories while biomass use hardly keeps up with population growth the mineral fractions grow at a rapid pace we show that increases in material productivity are mostly due to the slow growth of biomass use while they are much less pronounced for the mineral fractions so far there is no evidence that growth of global materials use is slowing down or might eventually decline and our results indicate that an increase in material productivity is a general feature of economic development

the modest environmental relief resulting from the transition to the service economy a service transition is supposed to lead to the decline of energy intensity energy gdp we argue that this interpretation is overly optimistic because the shift to a service economy is somewhat of an illusion in terms of real production several recent studies of structural effects on energy intensity have made the error of using sector shares in current prices combined with gdp in constant prices which is inconsistent and ignores the different behaviour of prices across sectors we use the more correct method of sector shares in constant prices and make an attempt to single out the effect from the real service transition by using two complementary methods shift share analyses in current and constant prices and logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi for 10 developed and 3 emerging economies a service transition is rather modest in real terms the major driver of the decline in energy intensity rests within the manufacturing sector meanwhile the transition to a service sector had a small downward impact on energy intensity in 7 of the developed countries and no impact in the others for emerging economies like brazil mexico and india it is the residential sector that drives energy intensity down because of the declining share of this sector as the formal economy grows and as a consequence of switching to more efficient fuels less

a matching model with endogenous skill requirements we consider a labor market in which workers differ in their abilities and jobs differ in their skill requirements the distribution of worker abilities is exogenous but we model the choice of skill requirements by firms high skill jobs produce more output than low skill jobs but high skill jobs require high skill workers and thus are more difficult to fill we use a matching model together with a nash bargaining approach to wage setting to determine the equilibrium mix of job types along with the equilibrium relationship between worker and job characteristics wages and unemployment

regular flexibility of nested ces functions in this paper we define the class of regular flexible functional forms as the class of cost functions which are globally well behaved and can provide a local approximation to any globally well behaved cost function we then offer a constructive proof of flexibility for the nonseparable n stage constant elasticity of substitution functional form nnces by describing a technique through which the nnces form can be parameterized so as to locally capture any regular configuration of input demands and second order curvature conditions

interpreting panel data on job tenure tenure responses in the panel study of income dynamics psid and the national longitudinal surveys are often inconsistent with calendar time these inconsistencies pose special problems in the psid because job changes cannot be identified directly so researchers must infer them from error ridden tenure data we use alternative rules for partitioning psid data into jobs and then estimate several wage and mobility models to assess the sensitivity of parameter estimates to the partitioning method we also assess the importance of replacing raw tenure data with imputed measures that are internally consistent

estimating the structure of industrial water demands the case of canadian manufacturing this study considers water use by canadian manufacturing firms the estimation of water demands is based on a detailed cross sectional survey of establishment level observations on water prices quantities and expenditures industrial water use is modeled as having four components intake treatment prior to use recirculation and discharge average values for the estimated own price elasticity for water intake range from 0 1534 to 0 5885 water recirculation is found to be a substitute for both water intake and water discharge this confirms that expanding the use of economic incentives e g effluent fees may be effective in encouraging firms to reduce their water use while increasing in plant recirculation

job mismatches and career mobility does over education assist or hinder occupational advancement career mobility theory hypothesizes that over education leads to a higher level of occupational advancement and wage growth over time

the nature of co2 emission kuznets curve this paper reveals that co2 emission kuznets curve merely reflects the peak theory of energy intensity the situation of real energy use should be used as a fundamental stone for both energy and environmental policy making

optimal mismatch and promotions i introduction a substantial proportion of workers are employed in jobs for which they appear to be either overqualified or underqualified for instance using data from the panel study of income dynamics sicherman 1991 finds that 40 percent of his sample are overeducated and another 16 percent are undereducated rumberger 1987 reports similar values using data from the quality of employment surveys other studies which find substantial education mismatch include duncan and hoffman 1981 verdugo and verdugo 1989 and hersch 1991 and evidence that a single firm hires both under and overqualified workers is presented here this paper provides an explanation for why firms hire both overqualified and underqualified workers firms hire overqualified workers because these workers require less training for their initial positions such workers also form a pool from which promotions are made which lowers hiring costs for higher level positions within the firm workers accept positions for which they are overqualified to enhance their probability of promotion and because of search and mobility costs but if they fail to be promoted to a position that better matches their qualifications they are more likely to quit firms hire underqualified workers despite their longer training requirement since such workers are less likely to quit and provide continuity of the labor force over time thus contrary to job matching arguments that would explain these hires as a result of imperfect information hiring of seemingly mismatched workers is optimal and these matches are made with perfect information the model developed in this paper yields three testable hypotheses 1 training time for entry level jobs is inversely related to overqualification at the time of hire 2 workers who are overqualified on their current job are those who have failed to be promoted to a job which better matches their qualifications and such workers are more likely to quit and 3 workers overqualified at time of hire are more likely to be promoted to test these hypotheses i use new data collected for this purpose previous empirical research such as that cited above was restricted by data availability to examining only the match between education and the worker s current job thus the quality of the match with the worker s initial job and the match between worker qualifications other than education has gone unexplored however various worker characteristics in addition to education are often substituted for each other in determining a worker s qualification for a job thus i examine additional qualifications including the match between the worker s experience level of previous job and use of skills information on the match between the worker s qualifications and those required for the initial job with the employer is particularly important since entry level qualifications determine training time for the initial job as well as the likelihood of promotion further individual specific training time for the initial job is necessary but typically not available since data sets providing information on training such as the panel study of income dynamics and quality of employment surveys request information on training time for the average worker and not for the individual worker the data set reveals several interesting statistics qualification mismatch at hire is fairly common for this firm 29 percent of the sample report themselves overqualified for their first job with the firm while 13 percent report themselves as underqualified lateral intra firm mobility is common and occurs far more frequently than promotions workers in the sample average 1 3 promotions but four different jobs with the employer this suggests that the job matching process occurs not only by turnover but through intrafirm mobility consistent with the assumptions and implications of the model the empirical results indicate that workers who are overqualified at hire receive less training and more promotions and that workers overqualified for their current job are more likely to quit

graduate overeducation as a sheepskin effect evidence from northern ireland this article examines the nature of graduate overeducation amongst a group of applicants to a graduate conversion programme it was found that while a substantial proportion of earnings differentials were associated with a mismatch between individual skill levels and job requirements wage gaps were still likely to occur should such mismatches be eliminated the evidence suggests that graduate wage levels are heavily related to sheepskin effects associated with the attainment of jobs with graduate level entry requirements these sheepskin effects suggest that the process of job categorization is arbitrary in nature with stated job requirements somewhat independent of actual skill requirements the analysis suggests that graduate overeduction is better understood within the context of both skill and categorization mismatches as opposed to skill matches alone

double penalty in returns to education informality and educational mismatch in the colombian labour market abstractthis article examines the returns to education taking into consideration the existence of educational mismatches in the formal and informal employment of a developing country results show that the returns of surplus required and deficit years of schooling are different in the two sectors moreover they suggest that these returns vary along the wage distribution and that the pattern of variation differs for formal and informal workers in particular informal workers face not only lower returns to their education but suffer a second penalty associated with educational mismatches that puts them at a greater disadvantage compare to their formal counterparts

block rate versus uniform water pricing in agriculture an empirical analysis in this article we adapt burtless and hausman s 1978 methodology in order to estimate farmers demand for irrigation water under increasing block rate tariffs and empirically assess its effect on aggregate demand and inter farm allocation efficiency this methodology overcomes the technical challenges raised by increasing block rate pricing and accounts for both observed and unobserved technological heterogeneity among farmers employing micro panel data documenting irrigation levels and prices in 185 israeli agricultural communities in the period 1992 1997 we estimate water demand elasticity at 0 3 in the short run the effect of a price change on demand within a year of implementation and 0 46 in the long run we also find that in accordance with common belief switching from a single to a block price regime yields a 7 reduction in average water use while maintaining the same average price however based on our simulations we estimate that the switch to block prices will result in a loss of approximately 1 of agricultural output due to inter farm allocation inefficiencies

the welfare impact of self supplied water pricing in canada a computable general equilibrium assessment this paper uses a computable general equilibrium model to assess the welfare cost of changing the method of water allocation in canada towards one that uses prices to ration demand we model the introduction of a price on both water that is abstracted as well as water that is consumed that is abstracted and not returned to the source we estimate that reducing water consumption by 25 would require imposition of a price on water consumption of around 0 21 text m 3 similarly introduction of a water abstraction charge of about 0 013 text m 3 would be sufficient to reduce water abstraction by 25 we find that if revenues from water pricing are returned in lump sum to households the introduction of water pricing would result in a modest welfare loss when revenues from water pricing are used to offset existing taxes we find a gain in welfare corresponding to a strong double dividend

the synthesis of bottom up and top down approaches to climate policy modeling electric power technologies and the cost of limiting us co2 emissions abstract in the us the bulk of co 2 abatement induced by carbon taxes comes from electric power this paper incorporates technology detail into the electricity sector of a computable general equilibrium model of the us economy to characterize electric power s technological margins of adjustment to carbon taxes and to elucidate their general equilibrium effects compared to the top down production function representation of the electricity sector the technology rich hybrid specification produces less abatement at a higher welfare cost suggesting that bottom up models do not necessarily generate lower costs of abatement than top down models this result is shown to be sensitive to the elasticity with which technologies generating capacities adjust to relative prices

overqualification permanent or transitory this article analyses job mismatches in switzerland based on a subjective measure of overqualification according to job search and job matching theories overqualification is a transitory problem other theories show that overqualification can also be of a permanent nature we test the perpetuity of overeducation using panel data from the first eight waves of the swiss household panel shp covering the period 1999 to 2006 our empirical analysis reveals little evidence for lasting rigidities that would cause permanent job mismatches rather spells of overqualification are relatively short about half of all individuals who were overqualified in a given year had an adequate job match 1 year later while a short duration of overqualification would be consistent with job search and job matching theories our observation that the probability of a job mismatch does not significantly decrease with experience is at odds with these theories our article provides an alternative explanation for this phenomenon

overeducation undereducation and asymmetric information in occupational mobility due to short term asymmetric information overeducated and undereducated workers are shown to have different optimal strategies in seeking upward occupational mobility into their next positions undereducated workers typically have other human capital strengths but these strengths are not marketable to outsiders overeducated workers typically have other human capital weaknesses that are not apparent to outsiders while their excess schooling is marketable in labour markets with dynamic asymmetric information this article presents empirical evidence showing that job tenure increases the probability of upward occupational mobility more if individuals are undereducated moreover the probability of finding upward occupational mobility is increased by overeducated workers engaging in firm switching this article also validates prior empirical studies finding overeducated workers more likely to self report engaging in firm switching activities and more likely to experience upward occupational mobility than o

the effect of uncertain educational requirements on education and wages this paper examines the effects of uncertain educational requirements the level of education required to enter an occupation varies with a number of factors workers may be uncertain as to their specific job when selecting an occupation thus they are also uncertain as to how much education they will need we find that occupations with more uncertainty pay males compensating wages however females do not receive compensating wages we also find a negative relationship between uncertain educational requirements and completed schooling for both men and women

municipal water supply and sewage treatment costs prices and distortions municipal water supply and sewage treatment utilities in ontario canada are studied in order to establish their costs of supply and evaluate their pricing practices prices charged to residential and commercial customers are found to be only one third and one sixth of the estimated marginal cost for water supply and sewage treatment respectively for example the average price to residential customers is 0 32m superscript 3 while the estimated marginal cost is 0 87 m superscript 3 the estimated cost parameters are combined with estimated residential and nonresidential demands functions in order to calculate approximate welfare losses that arise from overconsumption

too much investment a problem of endogenous outside options this paper shows that when agents on both sides of the market are heterogeneous varying in their costs of investment ex ante investments by firms and workers or buyers and sellers more generally may be too high when followed by stochastic matching and bargaining over quasi rents the overinvestment is caused by the fact that low cost agents by investing more can increase the value of their outside option and thus shift rent away from high cost investors numerical simulations show that overinvestment can occur given parameter values calibrated to oecd labour markets

can a water market avert the double whammy of trade reform and lead to a win win outcome abstract this paper focuses on the linkages between water and trade policies using morocco as a case this country is typical of many in that policy protects its import competing agricultural and industrial sectors while water in irrigated agriculture is priced below its marginal value product changing water policy without correcting for these other distortions leads to a more inefficient allocation of water on the other hand reforming trade policy alone can make farmers growing crops protected pre reform worse off using an intertemporal applied general equilibrium model we find that trade reform actually creates an opportunity to pursue water policy reform creating a water user rights market post trade reform not only compensates for the decline in farmers profits caused by the trade reform but also raises the efficiency of water allocation and hence benefits the economy as a whole

water competition through the water energy nexus assessing the economic impacts of climate change in a mediterranean context abstract the impacts of climate change on water resources availability are expected to be adverse especially in drier climate regions such as the mediterranean increased water scarcity will exacerbate competition for water resources not only between sectors but also between countries sharing transboundary river basins due to the mutual dependence of the energy sector on water resources and of the water services provision sector on energy inputs the water energy nexus is acknowledged as a major challenge for the near future with hydropower representing one of the most direct links in this nexus the aim of this paper is to assess the economy wide impacts of the concurrent effects of climate change driven impacts on water availability and the sectoral and regional competition for scarcer water resources in order to accomplish that goal an integrated modelling approach is developed where a computable general equilibrium model including raw water as a production factor is linked to times pt a bottom up model of the energy sector a case study is provided for the mediterranean country of portugal results for 2050 show that macroeconomic impacts are significant and encompass important inter sectoral differences that in turn depend on the degree of competition between sectors impacts are stronger when water consumption by spanish sectors is considered as this intensifies water scarcity in portugal thus the paper allows to gain insight in the broader water energy economy nexus and the additional costs that the dependence on water resources availability in transboundary river basins represents to an economy both aspects being of utmost importance for climate adaptation and energy policy making

overeducation in the labor market this article examines the reasons for the observed discrepancy between workers actual and required levels of schooling and the resulting differences in returns to schooling overeducated workers are found to be younger and to have lower amounts of on the job training than workers with the required level of schooling they also have higher rates of firm and occupational mobility characterized by movement of higher level occupations the findings suggest that overeducation can be explained by the trade off between schooling and other components of human capital and by the mobility patterns of overeducated workers

overeducation in the labour market abstract this paper presents a review of the literature on overeducation the paper assesses the consistency of overeducation within the context of a number of theoretical frameworks including human capital theory hct and assignment theory the analysis goes on to discuss the various measurement controversies associated with the study of overeducation in order to provide an assessment of the extent to which the impacts of the phenomenon represent an economic reality as opposed to a statistical artefact after reviewing the literature it is concluded that the impacts of overeducation are likely to be non trivial and that the phenomenon may potentially be costly to individuals and firms as well as the economy more generally the existence of overeducation also raises some doubts with respect to the validity of some of the central assumptions and predictions of hct that are unlikely to be fully explained by gaps in the standard wage equation framework

on the job search in a matching model with heterogeneous jobs and workers this paper considers a matching model with heterogenous jobs unskilled and skilled and workers low and high educated which allows for on the job search by mismatched workers the latter are high educated workers who transitorily accept unskilled jobs and continue to search for skilled jobs our findings show that on the job search introduces an additional source of between and within group wage inequality furthermore the higher quit rate of mismatched workers exerts a negative externality on unskilled jobs and weakens the labour market position of low educated workers this last feature changes the effects of skill biased technological change and it alters the response of the labour market to shifts in the skill distribution this paper has been written for presentation as an invited lecture at the annual conference of the european association of labour economics eale 2003 seville 18 21 september 2003 we are very grateful to maite blazquez for excellent research assistance we also wish to thank barbara petrongolo participants in seminars at uc3m core essex and lse for helpful comments and especially j albrecht for his insightful discussion on a preliminary draft of this paper the usual disclaimer applies

labor market institutions and wage inequality the authors investigate how labor market institutions such as unemployment insurance unions firing regulations and minimum wages have affected the evolution of wage inequality among male workers results of estimations using data on institutions in eleven oecd countries indicate that changes in labor market institutions can account for much of the change in wage inequality between 1973 and 1998 factors found to have been negatively associated with male wage inequality are union density the strictness of employment protection law unemployment benefit duration unemployment benefit generosity and the size of the minimum wage over the 26 year period institutional changes were associated with a 23 reduction in male wage inequality in france where minimum wages increased and employment protection became stricter but with an increase of up to 11 in the united states and united kingdom where unions became less powerful and in the united states minimum wages fell

overeducation undereducation and the british labour market this paper addresses the issue of overeducation and undereducation using for the first time a british dataset which contains explicit information on the level of required education to enter a job across the generality of occupations three key issues within the overeducation literature are addressed first what determines the existence of over and undereducation and to what extent are over and undereducation substitutes for experience tenure and training second to what extent are over and undereducation temporary or permanent phenomena third what are the returns to over and undereducation and do certain stylized facts discovered for the us and a number of european countries hold for britain

does corporate social responsibility make over educated workers more productive this article provides first evidence on whether corporate social responsibility csr influences the productivity effects of over education by relying on detailed belgian linked employer employee panel data covering the period 1999 2010 our empirical results exhibit a positive and significant impact of over education on firm productivity moreover they suggest that the effect of over education is positively enhanced when the firm implements a csr process especially when it aims to have i a good match between job requirements and workers educational level ii a diverse workforce in terms of gender and age and iii a long term relationship with its workers when focussing on required education and over education the results suggest that csr besides representing an innovative and proactive approach for the firms stakeholders may also be beneficial for the firm itself through a bigger increase in productivity for each additional year of required education or over education

empirical analysis of occupational hierarchies using data on u s engineers and the position of engineering jobs within firms this paper estimates a model of hierarchies within firms the model extends rosen s 1982 model of recursive production to two skills and multiple hierarchy levels the model generates an empirical model that is nested within a general roy 1951 model of self selection maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters of the production technology and the skill experience profiles are estimated the results suggest that approximately two thirds of changes in employment shares across hierarchy levels across time are explained by demographic shifts in the stock of engineering skills most of the returns to experience and to assignment to higher hierarchy levels within firms are caused by skill accumulation and self selection rather than technological dierences across hierarchy levels

changes in the united kingdom s natural relations in terms of society s metabolism and land use from 1850 to the present day abstract in this paper we present our understanding of how society and nature have interacted in the course of history in terms of society s metabolic interchange with the biophysical environment presenting a theoretical model we begin by focusing on the interface between society and nature society s natural relations as conceptualized by the idea of metabolism which draws upon marxist theory complemented by a systems approach the concept of metabolism portrays society as a system which has to establish and maintain a permanent throughput of energy and matter to produce and maintain society s material components the amount of resource flow is operationalized by using material and energy flow accounting methods empirically these methods are applied to the uk s economy in a time series approach from 1850 to the present day we discuss different aggregates of inputs such as domestic material extraction foreign trade of materials energy input and additionally give an account of land use change obviously these changing natural relations are linked to socio economic activities hence we make a first attempt to discuss different periods of socio economic development by drawing from a regulation approach and try to link them to physical indicators such as direct material and energy input and domestic material consumption dmc thereby we hope to contribute to a historical understanding of socio economically driven environmental change within the framework of ecological economics

is there a genuine under utilization of skills amongst the over qualified two theories of over qualification are considered namely mismatch whereby workers do not find the most appropriate jobs for their skills because of imperfect information or labour market rigidities and heterogeneous workers whereby individuals with the same qualifications have different actual skill levels so that they can be over qualified in terms of formal qualifications while their skills are actually appropriate for the jobs that they do the evidence suggests that both theories are relevant in certain situations

sources of bias in retrospective decision making experimental evidence on voters limitations in controlling incumbents are citizens competent to assess the performance of incumbent politicians observational studies cast doubt on voter competence by documenting several biases in retrospective assessments of performance however these studies are open to alternative interpretations because of the complexity of the real world in this article we show that these biases in retrospective evaluations occur even in the simplified setting of experimental games in three experiments our participants 1 overweighted recent relative to overall incumbent performance when made aware of an election closer rather than more distant from that event 2 allowed an unrelated lottery that affected their welfare to influence their choices and 3 were influenced by rhetoric to give more weight to recent rather than overall incumbent performance these biases were apparent even though we informed and incentivized respondents to weight all performance equally our findings point to key limitations in voters ability to use a retrospective decision rule

job matching and occupational choice this paper presents a model of job matching the generalizes the existing literature by allowing for different jobs types or occupations such differences affect the value of job specific experience inducing a career profile where certain types are sampled before others more specifically the analysis shows that it is optimal for the young and inexperienced to gravitate toward jobs exhibiting a certain kind of risk then after deriving the equilibrium job turnover rate for an economy in which people do not switch occupations panel data are used to estimate its underlying parameters the hypothesis that people do not switch occupations is rejected against the alternative that they do thus providing empirical support for the theoretical extension undertaken here