Ben Kriechel

The Role of Specific and General Human Capital after Displacement

Displaced workers experience significant and long‐lasting wage losses. However, the average wage losses hide the tremendous differences among workers. So far, the differences are explained by differences in accumulated on‐the‐job experience, education level, age, and so on, but a large variation among similar workers remain. In this paper we investigate the effect of general and specific human capital on the unemployment duration and wage losses during the first three years following displacement. Information on the specificity of a job or function allows us to quantify the impact on the wage losses. We are able to rank positions in terms of the specificity of accumulated human capital.

High and Steady or Low and Rising? Life-Cycle Earnings Patterns in Vocational and General Education

In this paper, we compare experience-earnings profiles of employees with vocational and general education background in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, three countries with fundamentally different education systems. Using Mixed-Effects Linear Regression Models we show that earnings of vocationally educated employees are higher in the initial phase of their career. However, those with a general education background catch up over time in the labor market. Life-cycle differences in earnings are more pronounced in Germany than in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

Workforce Reorganization and the Worker

In this article we study the joint decision process of changing the structure of jobs and laying off individual workers in a firm that downsizes its workforce. A hierarchical decision model is proposed and estimated using personnel data from a firm in demise comparing the characteristics of the individual workers and the structure of the firms labour force before and after its reorganization. Our results show that workers in jobs in the top levels of each skill groups hierarchy are better protected against downsizing due to larger productivity shocks and larger firing costs.