Career Progression and Formal versus on the Job Training

This paper evaluates the return to formal education over the life-cycle and compare it to informal, on the job training. More specifically, we assess the apprenticeship system in Germany by comparing the long run value of education choices and subsequent labor market outcomes for apprentices and non-apprentices. We develop a structural model of career progression and educational choice, allowing for unobserved ability, endogenous job to job transition, specific firm-worker matches, specific returns to tenure and to general experience. We estimate this model on a large panel data set which describes the career progression of young Germans. We find that formal education is more important than informal training, even when taking into account for the possible selection into education. We use the estimated model to evaluate the long-run impact of labor market policies on educational choices and career progression. We find that policies such as the Earned Income Tax Credit which subsidize low wage have a detrimental effect on the probability of further education and on job mobility.return to education, wages, labor mobility, in work benefits

P-values for non-standard distributions with an application to the DF test

The literature of unit roots and structural breaks has produced numerous tests that follow nonstandard asymptotic distributions. This paper by fitting a seminonparametric model to them proposes a new simple way of calculating the p-values

Liquidity constraints and time non-separable preferences: simulating models with large state spaces

This paper presents an alternative method for the stochastic simulation of nonlinear and possibly non-differentiable models with large state spaces. We compare our method to other existing methods, and show that the accuracy is satisfactory. We then use the method to analyze the features of an intertemporal optimizing consumption-saving model, when the utility function is time non-separable and when liquidity constraints are imposed. Two non-separabilities are studied, habit persistence and durability of the commodity. As the model has no closed-form solution, we compute deterministic and stochastic solution paths. It enables us to compare income and consumption volatility, and to describe the density of consumption under the different hypotheses on the utility function