Wage Elasticities of the Supply of R & D Workers in the Netherlands

No abstract.

Is there a link between economic outcomes and genetic evolution? Cross-country evidence from the major histocompatibility complex

This research develops a theory and presents empirical evidence of a link between economicoutcomes and genetic evolution. Important properties for successful analysis of such a link arefound in the adaptive immune system and particularly in the major histocompatibilitycomplex (MHC), a genetically encoded complex involved in the defence against infections.The theory incorporates properties of the MHC in a model of mutual dependence and exhibitsa trade-off in which every agent who is better off having an immune response different fromthat of others is also part of the protecting belt of others in a population, in which mountingsimilar immune responses is optimal. The data are based on large numbers of blood samplesfrom 63 different populations. The cross-country estimates show a robust negative associationbetween economic and health outcomes and MHC diversity and between average offers inultimatum and trust games and MHC diversity. The analyses suggest that societiesincorporating externalities from mutual dependence are economically more successful, andthat the incorporation of such externalities is evident at the gene level.education, training and the labour market;

Is There a Link between Economic Outcomes and Genetic Evolution? Cross-Country Evidence from the Major Histocompatibility Complex

This research develops a theory and presents empirical evidence of a link between economic outcomes and genetic evolution. Important properties for successful analysis of such a link are found in the adaptive immune system and particularly in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), a genetically encoded complex involved in the defence against infections. The theory incorporates properties of the MHC in a model of mutual dependence and exhibits a trade-off in which every agent who is better off having an immune response different from that of others is also part of the protecting belt of others in a population, in which mounting similar immune responses is optimal. The data are based on large numbers of blood samples from 63 different populations. The cross-country estimates show a robust negative association between economic and health outcomes and MHC diversity and between average offers in ultimatum and trust games and MHC diversity. The analyses suggest that societies incorporating externalities from mutual dependence are economically more successful, and that the incorporation of such externalities is evident at the gene level.Economics ;

Supply and Demand, Allocation and Wage Inequality: An International Comparison

In this paper, we develop an allocation model of workers differentiated by their field of study to test whether international differences in the wage structure can be explained by differences in labor demand and supply in each country. The model explicitly takes into account the effects of supply an demand shifts on the allocation structure to disentangle country specific differences in the recruitment for one occupation from real supply-demand effects. Empirical results based on data for nine countries show that cross-country differences in wage inequality explain at least 2/3 of the differences in labor demand and supply.education, training and the labour market;

Job Mobility in Europe, Japan and the U.S.

Evidence about job mobility outside the U.S. is scarce and difficult to compare cross-nationally because of non-uniform data. We document job mobility patterns of college graduates in their first three years in the labor market, using unique uniform data covering 11 European countries and Japan. Using the NLSY, we replicate the information in this survey to compare the results to the U.S. We find that (1) U.S. graduates hold more jobs than European graduates. (2) Contrasting conventional wisdom, job mobility in Japan is only somewhat lower than the European average. (3) There are large differences in job mobility within Europe.Europe, graduates, job mobility, Japan, U.S.

The Americanization of European Higher Education and Research

Over the past two decades there has been a substantial increase in the mobility ofstudents in Europe, while also research has become much more internationallyoriented. In this paper we document changes in the structure of research and highereducation in Europe and investigate potential explanations for the strong increase inits international orientation. While higher education started to grow substantiallyaround 1960, only a few decades later, research and higher education transformedgradually to the American standard. Decreased communication costs are likely causesfor this trend. Th is transformation is most clearly revealed in the change of languageused in research from the national language, Latin, German and French to English.Smaller language areas made this transformation earlier while there are also cleartiming diff erences between research fi elds. Sciences and medicine tend to switch toEnglish fi rst, followed by economics and social sciences, while for law and arts onlythe fi rst signs of such a transformation are currently observed. Th is suggests thatreturns to scale and the transferability of research results are important infl uences inthe decision to adopt the international standard.education, training and the labour market;