Good skills in bad times: Cyclical skill mismatch and the long-term effects of graduating in a recession

We show that cyclical skill mismatch, defined as mismatch between the skills supplied by college graduates and skills demanded by hiring industries, is an important mechanism behind persistent career loss from graduating in recessions. Using Norwegian data, we find a strong countercyclical pattern of skill mismatch among college graduates. Initial labor market conditions have a declining but persistent effect on match quality and skill mismatch early in their careers. Match quality of the first employment may explain up to half of the short-term and most of the long-term earnings loss from graduating in a recession.We thank the editor and two anonymous referees for their constructive suggestions, and also Bart Cockx, Peter Gottschalk, Robert Moffitt, and the participants at several seminars and conferences for helpful comments and discussions. Sørensen acknowledges support from ESOP, Department of Economics, University of Oslo. This research is supported by the Research Council of Norway Grant 202445.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2015.08.01

Environmental Change Enhances Cognitive Abilities in Fish

Cichlid fish subjected to a single change in food ration early in life show enhanced learning abilities during juvenile and adult stages

Employee Education, Information and Communication Technology, Workplace Organization and Trade: A Comparative Analysis of Greek and Swiss Enterprises

This paper aims at investigating empirically at the firm level the effect of the use of modern information and communication technologies (ICT), and also of two other factors, the adoption of new forms of workplace organization and trade (export) activities, on the demand for employees with different levels of (vocational) education. The study is based on firm-level data collected through a common questionnaire from firms' samples of similar composition (concerning firm sizes and industries) in Greece and Switzerland; from these data econometric models of similar specification have been constructed for both countries. The results of multivariate analysis show that the intensive use of ICT correlates positively with the employment shares of high-educated personnel and negatively with the ones of the loweducated personnel. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis of skill-biased technical change. Further, the intensive use of employee voice-oriented organizational practices correlates positively with the employment shares of high-educated employees in both countries, and also negatively with the employment share of low-educated ones only for the Swiss firms. The results for the work design organizational practices are more ambiguous. Thus, there is only partial confirmation of the hypothesis of skilled-biased organizational change. Finally, we found some evidence in favour of the trade effect (export activities) only for the Swiss firms. Our results show both similarities and differences in the above aspects between Greece and Switzerland and indicate that national context characteristics affect the relationship of the demand for employees with different levels of (vocational) education with ICT use, adoption of new forms of workplace organization and trade

Evidence of Segregated Spawning in a Single Marine Fish Stock: Sympatric Divergence of Ecotypes in Icelandic Cod?

There is increasing recognition of intraspecific diversity and population structure within marine fish species, yet there is little direct evidence of the isolating mechanisms that maintain it or documentation of its ecological extent. We analyzed depth and temperature histories collected by electronic data storage tags retrieved from 104 Atlantic cod at liberty ≥1 year to evaluate a possible isolating mechanisms maintaining population structure within the Icelandic cod stock. This stock consists of two distinct behavioral types, resident coastal cod and migratory frontal cod, each occurring within two geographically distinct populations. Despite being captured together on the same spawning grounds, we show the behavioral types seem reproductively isolated by fine-scale differences in spawning habitat selection, primarily depth. Additionally, the different groups occupied distinct seasonal thermal and bathymetric niches that generally demonstrated low levels of overlap throughout the year. Our results indicate that isolating mechanisms, such as differential habitat selection during spawning, might contribute to maintaining diversity and fine-scale population structure in broadcast-spawning marine fishes