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This thesis starts by critically assessing human capital theory in the study of education and labour markets. It is argued that, while revealing the statistical significance of factors like ethnicity in education and labour markets, it does not help us to imderstand how education is provided and how labour markets are structured. The reason for this is that it leaves aside the historical and institutional contexts from the analysis, so that the question of why factors like ethnicity gain significance in education and labour markets carmot be addressed appropriately. These fundamental flaws undermine the relevance of human capital theory in the study of higher education and labour markets, and they are indeed compounded in the empirical application to the Malaysian case. Rather than applying the theory or remedying its analytical deficiencies, therefore, this thesis breaks with it and instead adopts a political economy approach that places the role of government at the analytical centre. Being a multi-ethnic coimtry, Malaysia's higher education and labour market policies reflect the trade-off between equity, or inter-ethnic distribution, and efficiency, or economic growth. The main purpose for this is to maintain social stability by lifting up the socio-economic status of Malays whilst increasing the economic pie to distribute. The New Economic Policy set the institutional foundation on which these policies are introduced and implemented. Access to higher education and provision of higher educational services are institutionally arranged in favour of Malays, and the public sector is geared towards employing them. Empirical analysis of the Population and Housing Census Malaysia 2000 points to ethnic differentials in access to higher education and sector selection in labour markets. It is also found that the ethnic factor persists from higher education through to labour markets, implying that the decisions of higher education enrolment and sector selection are made simultaneously.

This thesis considers whether there is a case for the regulation of qualifications in England. It draws on regulatory theory to develop an original conceptual model for regulation incorporating five important public interest objectives: control of systemic risk; quality; information asymmetry; value for money; and planning deficit. The model is used to evaluate the case for regulation. Interviews with officials responsible for regulatory policy, and representatives of those organisations subject to regulation, provide evidence that allows an assessment of whether they understand and support the regulatory functions appropriate to qualifications, the value of such regulation and possible alternatives. The study reviews how other regulatory arrangements in education and training inform the evaluation of the case for regulation. The thesis also surveys the basis for the regulation of financial services to see if lessons can be learnt for the regulation of qualifications from a non-educational context. The thesis concludes that a case can be made for the regulation of qualifications but that such a case needs to go back to first principles rather than depend on the current inadequate legislative basis. There is a clear case for regulation to address the issues of systemic risk and quality and standards and these were identified in my empirical findings as the two most important objectives. As far as the issues of information asymmetry and value for money are concerned there is justification for regulation in principle although in practice the case does not appear to be very strong. However, the case for central planning of the qualifications system is not clear and further justification would need to be made for before regulation could be justified to achieve this objective. Finally, the key issues of regulatory balance and the impact of economic globalisation are discussed in relation to the future direction of regulatory policy.

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Cette thèse porte sur le lien entre l’hétérogénéité et l’efficacité technique d’une équipe de travail. La littérature académique avance deux thèses opposées à ce sujet : les uns soutiennent que l’hétérogénéité, en diminuant la cohésion de l’équipe, nuirait à son efficacité tandis que d’autres y voient une source de créativité et d’apprentissages réciproques favorables à la productivité. La thèse propose un nouveau cadre théorique permettant de comprendre ce lien et de dépasser ces oppositions en distinguant, pour chaque forme de l’hétérogénéité, une dimension fonctionnelle et une dimension psychosociale. Cette nouvelle approche est ensuite mise à l’épreuve des faits. À partir de données d’une enseigne de la grande distribution, nous mesurons l’efficacité technique de 411 équipes de managers de vente, et testons économétriquement nos hypothèses à propos de plusieurs formes d’hétérogénéité (âge, genre, diplômes, niveaux de compétences). Nous en déduisons un certain nombre de recommandations sur la manière dont un responsable des ressources humaines peut prendre en considération l’hétérogénéité de ses équipes de travail. / This thesis addresses the link between the heterogeneity of a work team and its technical efficiency. The academic literature puts forth two opposite statements on this topic: On one side heterogeneity is said to reduce the team’s efficiency by diminishing its cohesion ; on the other side it is considered as a source of mutual learning and creativity, thus increasing the team’s productivity. This thesis proposes a new theoretical framework that enables us to understand this link and overcome these oppositions by distinguishing, for every form of heterogeneity, a functional dimension and a psychosocial dimension. This new approach was then empirically tested by using data from a large-scale retail company. We measured the technical efficiency of 411 teams of sales managers and econometrically tested our hypothesis for several forms of heterogeneity (age, gender, education level and skills level). Based on the result we put forth several recommended practices intended for Human Resources supervisors who want to take into account the heterogeneity of their teams.

This thesis consists of three independent chapters on human capital in Brazil. Chapter one examines the effect of the introduction of automatic grade promotion on student performance in 1,993 public primary schools in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. A difference-in-differences approach that exploits variation over time in the adoption of the policy allows the identification of the treatment effect of automatic promotion. I find a negative and significant effect of about 6% of a standard deviation. I provide evidence from quantile regression DiD estimates consistent with an interpretation of the findings as disincentive effect on student effort associated with the introduction of automatic grade promotion; additional evidence on student and teacher behaviour supports this interpretation. Chapter two provides a novel way of identifying peer group effects in Brazil. Students in Brazil are typically assigned to classes based on the age ranking in their cohort. I exploit this rule to estimate the effects on maths achievement of being in class with older peers for students in fifth grade using a regression discontinuity design. I provide evidence that heterogeneity in age (and in other characteristics) is an important factor for student performance. Information on teaching practices and student behaviour sheds light on how class heterogeneity may harm learning. Chapter three uses microdata from Brazilian vital statistics natality and mortality data between 2000 and 2010 to estimate the impact of in-utero exposure to local violence - measured by homicide rates - on birth outcomes. Focusing on small communities, for which it is more credible that local homicide rates reflect actual exposure to violence, the analysis shows that exposure to violence during pregnancy leads to deterioration in birth outcomes: one extra homicide during the first trimester of pregnancy increases the probability of low birthweight by around 6 percent.

In this thesis the regional effects of immigration onto native wages and employment in the United Kingdom and in Germany were examined. Using the regional survey data of the British QLFS from 1993-2009, the estimation results confirmed that foreign workers and British are imperfect substitutes. Natives and immigrants with middle education are found to have the highest elasticity of substitution. Unsurprisingly, the largest percentage of foreign population has been found to be in England. In the analysed time of 1993 until 2009, only middle educated British experienced negative earnings and employment effects caused by immigration. Taking the wage and employment impacts for natives of all three skill groups in the four British countries and the UK itself into account, it can be seen that the positive wage effects were numerically larger than the negative employment changes. Applying the individual data of the German SOEP from 1984-2007 (from 1994 including data about East Germany), imperfect substitution between regional Germans and foreigners were determined. Examining several regions of West Germany (North- West and Middle-South-West) in the time frame of 1994-2007, it could be seen that natives with low and middle education gained in their wages but lost in their employment to immigrants of similar education. However, highly skilled German P a g e | 2 citizens were confronted with a wage loss but higher employment. The analysis of the effect of immigration on native wages and employment in East Germany led to interesting results. Low, middle and highly educated East German natives experienced either a minimal wage increase or no wage change. Considering the employment in East Germany, low educated natives saw a small rise in their employment. However, no change could be found in the employment of middle and highly skilled workers in East Germany.

In my thesis I investigate the causes and the effects of the allocation of workers into occupations, sectors, and locations. My analysis is substantially aided by the availability of new data on workers’ talents (or skills). The first chapter of the thesis exploits the fact that workers choose occupations according to their talents in order to study the effects on wages of the declining demand for manufacturing and clerical occupations. This is done by relating the occupational choices and the wages associated with particular talents over two representative cohorts of young workers in the United States between the late 1980s and the late 2000s. The second chapter, which is conjoint work, analyses the effect of an inflow of talent on productivity and output in the academic sector. We exploit the countercyclical relative attractiveness of academia as an employer over the business cycle to study periods of high (recessions) and low (booms) inflow of talent into that sector. Finally, the third chapter shows that government policy in the form of commuting tax breaks has substantial effects on the allocation of workers into jobs and residences. In particular, I exploit two reductions of tax breaks for commuting in 2003/4 and 2006/7 in Germany to estimate commuting costs’ effects on workers’ decisions to change the location of their job and/or their house.

Si la croissance économique indienne s’accompagne depuis les années 80 d’une réduction de la pauvreté, elle se polarise au Sud et au Nord-Ouest de l’Inde. La migration temporaire constitue l’une des réponses choisies par les populations originaires du Bihar au maintien des disparités économiques régionales. La thèse s’appuie sur un travail de terrain mené à Delhi. La filière migratoire empruntée par des migrants originaires principalement du Bihar et à destination de Delhi est analysée dans une perspective historique, à l’échelle des ménages, puis en mettant l’accent sur l’inscription de ces mobilités dans le cadre de réseaux migratoires. Pour parvenir en ville, les migrants s’appuient en effet sur deux types de réseaux. Ces réseaux ne se recouvrent pas et contribuent à la segmentation spatiale du marché du travail. Les modalités et les bénéfices de la migration dépendent alors du type de réseaux dans lequel s’inscrivent les migrants. L'auteur examine plus particulièrement les ressorts de la mobilisation de ces réseaux migratoires du point de vue des employeurs. En privilégiant la recommandation des travailleurs en poste, plutôt que de recourir aux marchés locaux du travail sur lesquels les migrants recherchent de l’ouvrage, les employeurs contribuent à la segmentation du marché du travail. L'approche méthodologique utilisée pour traiter du problème fait appel aux typologies et à l'économétrie qualitative. L’auteur défend l’idée que les employeurs organisent et entretiennent ces réseaux migratoires dans le cadre de pratiques de recrutement destinées à stabiliser la main-d’œuvre d’une part et à assurer la formation de la main-d’œuvre d’autre part. / While the improvement of the GDP growth rate since the late 1980’s is associated to a decreasing population living under the poverty line, there are still deep economic disparities between States in India. Short-term migration is one of the livelihood strategies chosen by households from Bihar to accommodate themselves with those persistent regional disparities. This statement is supported by our fieldwork among migrants in Delhi. The migration stream used by migrants from Bihar to Delhi is analyzed in an historical perspective, at the level of households concerned by those migrations and from the point of view of the migration networks used by workers to get access to urban employment. Migrants are embedded in two types of networks which are organized in two different ways their access to the urban labor market. Those two migration networks do not overlap and the patterns and the gains related to the migration decision depend on the type of migration networks used by the workers. The author considers more particularly the role of such migration networks from the point of view of employers. Those streams are obviously built-in by successive waves of migrants. Besides these streams are also founded and maintained by employers. While using referrals rather than recruiting workers at the street corner labor markets, employers contribute to the labor market segmentation. To deal with this problem, the author leans on econometric analysis and typologies. The main idea stressed by the author is that referrals are a device that allows employers to organize the training of workers and reduce labor turnover in a context of an overwhelming use of short-term labor contracts.

This thesis aims to document several aspects pertaining to the dynamics of human capital, both from a theoretical and an empirical viewpoint. Chapter 2 studies how informational flows arising from social connections can affect careers and promotions. It aims to achieve identification of this causal pathway by focusing on the careers of bishops in the Catholic church. The range of the data, both in time and in space, makes it possible to infer some types of social connections between bishops (based on geography and careers), which in turn allows for the identification of their effect on careers. I find that being connected to the relevant bishops has a positive and significant effect on the likelihood of promotion to a diocese. Chapter 3 investigates the transmission of human capital from one generation to the next. While the correlation of parents’ educational achievement with that of their children is strong and well documented, there is a scarcity of consensual evidence that this relationship has a causal nature. We use a French reform that increased the duration of compulsory schooling by two years as a natural experiment, providing exogenous variation in parental years of schooling, and study its effect on the children of the affected individuals. We find evidence of a strong effect of paternal education on the educational achievement of children. Research on employer learning has concentrated on contexts where there is uncertainty only on either the general or the match-specific human capital of the worker. Chapter 4 develops a model where general and specific human capital coexist, and the uncertainty is on their respective shares in total productivity. The model generates predictions on a number of dimensions, e.g. declining worker mobility with experience and increase in wage variance over the lifetime.