The thesis focuses on the demand side of the labour market in conjecturing that 'the degree of attractiveness' of industry and firms to high-skilled workers could be an important determinant of regional labour market mismatch. Using data from the unexplored Employers Skills Survey, a dichotomous mismatch index based on skill-shortage vacancies is modelled as a function of firm and industry-level characteristics. Oacaxa-Blinder (OB) type decompositions are implemented to investigate the extent to which the predictors affect mismatch differently in England and Scotland. Two exploratory extensions are considered: (i) the inclusion of the Pareto shape parameter of an industry's firm size distribution, as an index of industry-level (average) productivity; (ii) a control for whether a firm is part of a multi-site organisation, believed as indicative of a firm export-status. UK level mismatch appears to be negatively correlated with both firm size and skill intensity. This is consistent with both a wide body of empirical evidence and an emerging two-sided heterogeneity theoretical literature showing that more productive firms are larger and tend to attract better workers. We also find a negative relationship between both the Pareto shape parameter and the multi-plant control, and firmlevel mismatch. At a regional level the key determinants seem to lose predictive power in Scotland where only the multi-site control retains statistical significance. To our knowledge, no study for the UK has to date ever: (i) used the same mismatch measure; (ii) adopted firm and industry-level characteristics as predictors of skill mismatch; (iii) decomposed skill mismatch using OB procedures. From a policy perspective, our findings suggest that addressing skill mismatch requires complementing policies targeting skill acquisition with interventions aimed at enhancing firms' and clusters' attractiveness to high skill workers. Migration, international trade openness and skill mismatch are in fact intrinsically intertwined and central to Scotland's post-Brexit future.

Multi-skilling, an organisational strategy aimed at increasing the skill repertoire of the worker with the intent of facilitating the role and task flexibility among organisational members, is investigated.A literature review on the subject identified a number of factors contributing towards the development of a multi-skilled workforce. These ranged from the abolition of demarcation restrictions between jobs and skill-based pay systems, to the modification of the supervisory role. However, the literature fails to consider the role of technology in such developments. It was suggested that this was central to the development of skills.A framework was proposed that hypothesized a relationship between technological uncertainty the extent to which task activities are varied and difficult and skill requirements. It was further hypothesized that technology influences the structuring of activities within organisational subsystems. It was suggested that these would act either to facilitate or inhibit multi-skilling development.The structuring of activities within a unit consist of specialisation (the number of different tasks assigned to the unit); standardisation (the degree to which policies, rules, and procedures are formalised and used to guide action); interchangeability (the extent to which A can perform Bs job at short notice, and vice versa); locus of authority (the source of decision-making authority within the unit, for example, the supervisor rather than the worker); and skill heterogeneity (the variability in skill composition among unit members).A preliminary evaluation of the framework was carried out in an organisation engaged in the processing of mineral ore, with a largely semi-skilled workforce (N=165), where a multi-skilling programme was in progress.Evidence was presented that suggested a relationship between the level of technological uncertainty and ++ / skill development. However, the results failed to confirm the pervasive influence of technology with regard to the structuring of activities within subsystems. Instead, technological uncertainty was significantly related to the design of jobs, and specifically to the degree of the standardisation of jobs of organisational members. Also, contrary to the anticipated direction, there was an association between perceived standardisation of activities within subsystems and job satisfaction.

Finding an explanation for the rise and persistence of European unemployment has been one of the main research programmes of labour economists during the last decade. In this doctoral thesis, we contribute to this literature by questioning the causes of unemployment persistence in Belgium. To that purpose, we conduct an in-depth econometric analysis of the flows out of unemployment in this country. In Chapters 2 and 3, we study the behaviour of the exit rate out of unemployment over duration and calendar time. In Chapter 3, we investigate whether this behaviour differs according to the place of living and the skill level, as measured by the level of education. Finally, in Chapter 4, we determine to what extent the divergences in the rate of flowing from unemployment between workers with different levels of education can be explained by a skill mismatch phenomenon and/or by a job competition story. By refining the causes of unemployment persistence in Belgium, our doctoral research also contributes to the design of more effective labour market policies.

Finding an explanation for the rise and persistence of European unemployment has been one of the main research programmes of labour economists during the last decade. In this doctoral thesis, we contribute to this literature by questioning the causes of unemployment persistence in Belgium. To that purpose, we conduct an in-depth econometric analysis of the flows out of unemployment in this country. In Chapters 2 and 3, we study the behaviour of the exit rate out of unemployment over duration and calendar time. In Chapter 3, we investigate whether this behaviour differs according to the place of living and the skill level, as measured by the level of education. Finally, in Chapter 4, we determine to what extent the divergences in the rate of flowing from unemployment between workers with different levels of education can be explained by a skill mismatch phenomenon and/or by a job competition story. By refining the causes of unemployment persistence in Belgium, our doctoral research also contributes to the design of more effective labour market policies.

With the rise of the knowledge economy and aging population, advanced industrial countries seek to address their skill shortage and promote national skill bases through highly skilled migration. As a result, recruiting international students, especially those at tertiary levels, has been integrated into national strategies to compete for global talent. In spite of the widely recognized significance of recruiting international students to a high skill economy, the uneven growth in foreign enrolments among host countries, geographically oriented source regions and destinations of the students, and limited post-graduate stay rates suggest important questions about governments commitment to attracting and retaining international students. A main purpose of this comparative study is to identify and assess specific national strategies and their goals of managing international student mobility. Changes in international student policies, in particular entry and immigration regulations, and the trends in student mobility in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom since the 1990s are examined drawing on secondary data. The results suggest that rather than strictly relying on market forces, nation states address and cope with the pressure point of skill upgrading in a strategic and political way. The management of international student mobility, among other national strategies aiming at a high skill society embraces a collective goal of national interest shaped by the political economy in each nation.

Commentary on skilled trades occupations in Canada has been framed by two main paradigms: The dominant policy discourse has applied human capital theory to the dynamics of the skilled labour supply, often concentrating on intractable “problems” such as low apprenticeship participation and completion rates and an extreme gender imbalance in the trades. Sociological research has portrayed trades occupations as positions of structurally reproduced social disadvantage. This study adopts an alternate, neo-Weberian framework centred on the theory of economic social action. Social structure is treated in strictly nominalistic terms, and social action is rooted in the interest-oriented behaviour of socially embedded individuals. The study, undertaken in a large public-sector shipyard, involved both a pen-and-paper survey (N=509) of skilled trades workers and ten focus group interviews with 49 respondents from labour and management. The research questions addressed indicators of structural (dis)advantage and reproduction, as well as the specific mechanisms of social action operating within the study environment. The population shows a very distinct profile in terms of gender, ethnicity, and educational investment. Data on earnings, job security, and working conditions dispel any suspicion of economic disadvantage. Although a high proportion of incumbents have family connections to the skilled trades, an analysis of their siblings’ occupations refutes the supposition of structural determinism through the family. Instead, it is argued that both the social profile of the workforce and the high density of family and network connections reflect the use of “bridging” and “bonding” social capital strategies by study population members. The operative mechanisms include formal elements of the organization’s hiring practices, as well as institutionalized group norms and workplace culture. Through a “separatist” discourse that invokes notions of both “trade stigma” and “trade pride,” incumbents ascribe a particular set of cognitive and moral attributes to trades workers, which also contribute to defining the formal and informal membership requirements for their occupations. By approaching occupations as sites of economic social action, this research concludes that some of the intractable “problems” in Canada’s apprenticeable trades reflect individual behaviours that are enabled and incited by institutional features integral to the present skilled trades system.

With the rise of the knowledge economy and aging population, advanced industrial countries seek to address their skill shortage and promote national skill bases through highly skilled migration. As a result, recruiting international students, especially those at tertiary levels, has been integrated into national strategies to compete for global talent. In spite of the widely recognized significance of recruiting international students to a high skill economy, the uneven growth in foreign enrolments among host countries, geographically oriented source regions and destinations of the students, and limited post-graduate stay rates suggest important questions about governments commitment to attracting and retaining international students. A main purpose of this comparative study is to identify and assess specific national strategies and their goals of managing international student mobility. Changes in international student policies, in particular entry and immigration regulations, and the trends in student mobility in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom since the 1990s are examined drawing on secondary data. The results suggest that rather than strictly relying on market forces, nation states address and cope with the pressure point of skill upgrading in a strategic and political way. The management of international student mobility, among other national strategies aiming at a high skill society embraces a collective goal of national interest shaped by the political economy in each nation.

This thesis explores the incidence, the determinants and the consequences of overeducation and overskilling on individuals and firm performance in Malaysia. Three datasets were utilised: the 2007 Productivity Investment Climate Survey (PICS-2), the 1988 Malaysia Family Life Survey (MFLS-2) and the 2007 Graduate Tracer Study (GTS-07). The PICS-2 focused on overeducation and overskilling in the manufacturing sector whilst the MFLS-2 and GTS-07 highlighted overeducation on married respondents and graduates, respectively. With respect to the incidence, overeducation ranges from 19 to 32% whilst overskilling stands at 29%: moderately overskilled (7%) and severely overskilled (22%). As regards the determinants, workplace characteristics such as firm size, ownership, workforce composition and types of hiring practice play a role on overeducation and overskilling decision. Furthermore, labour market size and greater spatial flexibility, such as access to cars and public transportation, along with the individuals' heterogeneity in ability and skills also influence the overeducation incidence. On top of that, being overeducated increases the probability of being overskilled. In terms of consequences, overeducation and overskilling lead to lower earnings. Ordinary least square (OLS) and the random effects (RE) estimate that the earnings loss due to overeducation range from 2 to 24%, with a range of 2 to 11% for overskilled workers. The degree of overeducation and overskilling matters with the overeducation penalty (GTS-07) being larger for the severely overeducated than for the moderately overeducated, whilst severely overskilled workers (PICS-2) face a greater earnings loss compared with the moderately overskilled. Using a quantile regression, some evidences indicate overeducation and overskilling penalty related to unobserved individual abilities, especially for the males' sample. What is more, the GTS-07 reveals that overeducation leads to a lower job satisfaction and increases the on-the-job search behaviour amongst the overeducated workers. Both negative effects are much higher for the workers who are severely rather than moderately overeducated. As regards firm performance, negative externalities from having mismatched workers at the workplace are observed, as these tend to reduce firm performance. However, these negative externalities are largely contributed by having a higher proportion of overeducated as compared to overskilled workers. Apart from quit rate, overeducation decreased the workplace average pay, labour productivity, output and sales per worker but increased in absenteeism. By contrast, hardly any impact is observed regarding overskilling on firm performance apart from the average workplace pay. This suggests that reducing the incidence of mismatch, particularly educational mismatch in the workplace, is essential in improving firm performance thus remaining competitive domestically and globally. This thesis contributes to the existing literature by providing empirical evidence on the incidence and the consequences of overeducation and overskilling on individuals and firm performance in Malaysia. Similar study remains to be very scarce in the context of a developing country.

Stroke is the leading cause of long-lasting disability in the United States and disproportionately affects adults in later life. Age-related decreases in dexterity and neural plasticity may contribute to the poorer prognosis of older stroke survivors, even following rehabilitative physical therapy. The goal of these dissertation studies is to determine how the cortical plasticity underlying motor skill learning, both before and after brain injury, changes in the aged brain. The general hypothesis of these studies is that age-related changes in motor performance and the limited ability to regain function following brain injury are associated with dysfunctional plasticity of the forelimb representation in the motor cortex. This hypothesis was tested in intact C57BL/6 mice by training them on a skilled reaching task and deriving intracortical microstimulation evoked motor cortical representations of the forelimb to determine training-induced changes in the function of the motor cortex. After ischemic lesions, age-dependencies in the effects of rehabilitative training in skilled reaching on forelimb motor cortical representations were investigated. Prior to injury, intact young and aged mice learned a skilled reaching task in similar time frames and with similar success rates. Training-induced reorganization in the young mouse motor cortex occurred in the caudal forelimb area, which is homologous to the primary motor cortex of primates. However, the rostral forelimb area, a potential premotor cortex, was larger in aged mice compared to young mice. Following focal ischemic lesions of the forelimb area of the sensorimotor cortex, aged mice had larger lesions and were more impaired than young mice, but both groups regained reaching ability after 9 weeks of rehabilitative training. Post-operative training resulted in plasticity of the rostral forelimb area in young mice, but we failed to see reorganization in the forelimb map of aged mice following rehabilitative training. These dissertation studies suggest that more severe brain damage in response to ischemia leads to poorer outcome in aged animals. Although the reorganization of motor cortex following initial skill learning and relearning following brain damage changes with age, the ability to learn motor tasks and improve function with rehabilitative training is maintained in healthy aging. / text

Commentary on skilled trades occupations in Canada has been framed by two main paradigms: The dominant policy discourse has applied human capital theory to the dynamics of the skilled labour supply, often concentrating on intractable “problems” such as low apprenticeship participation and completion rates and an extreme gender imbalance in the trades. Sociological research has portrayed trades occupations as positions of structurally reproduced social disadvantage. This study adopts an alternate, neo-Weberian framework centred on the theory of economic social action. Social structure is treated in strictly nominalistic terms, and social action is rooted in the interest-oriented behaviour of socially embedded individuals. The study, undertaken in a large public-sector shipyard, involved both a pen-and-paper survey (N=509) of skilled trades workers and ten focus group interviews with 49 respondents from labour and management. The research questions addressed indicators of structural (dis)advantage and reproduction, as well as the specific mechanisms of social action operating within the study environment. The population shows a very distinct profile in terms of gender, ethnicity, and educational investment. Data on earnings, job security, and working conditions dispel any suspicion of economic disadvantage. Although a high proportion of incumbents have family connections to the skilled trades, an analysis of their siblings’ occupations refutes the supposition of structural determinism through the family. Instead, it is argued that both the social profile of the workforce and the high density of family and network connections reflect the use of “bridging” and “bonding” social capital strategies by study population members. The operative mechanisms include formal elements of the organization’s hiring practices, as well as institutionalized group norms and workplace culture. Through a “separatist” discourse that invokes notions of both “trade stigma” and “trade pride,” incumbents ascribe a particular set of cognitive and moral attributes to trades workers, which also contribute to defining the formal and informal membership requirements for their occupations. By approaching occupations as sites of economic social action, this research concludes that some of the intractable “problems” in Canada’s apprenticeable trades reflect individual behaviours that are enabled and incited by institutional features integral to the present skilled trades system.