Ample evidence indicates that a person’s human capital is important for success on the labor market in terms of both wages and employment prospects. However, unlike the efforts to identify the impact of school attainment on labor-market outcomes, the literature on returns to cognitive skills has not yet provided convincing evidence that the estimated returns can be causally interpreted. Using the PIAAC Survey of Adult Skills, this paper explores several approaches that aim to address potential threats to causal identification of returns to skills, in terms of both higher wages and better employment chances. We address measurement error by exploiting the fact that PIAAC measures skills in several domains. Furthermore, we estimate instrumental-variable models that use skill variation stemming from school attainment and parental education to circumvent reverse causation. Results show a strikingly similar pattern across the diverse set of countries in our sample. In fact, the instrumental-variable estimates are consistently larger than those found in standard least-squares estimations. The same is true in two “natural experiments,” one of which exploits variation in skills from changes in compulsory-schooling laws across U.S. states. The other one identifies technologically induced variation in broadband Internet availability that gives rise to variation in ICT skills across German municipalities. Together, the results suggest that least-squares estimates may provide a lower bound of the true returns to skills in the labor market.

Die Weltwirtschaft wächst derzeit langsamer als vor der Pandemie, wobei sich die Unterschiede zwischen den Regionen verringern. Während die konjunkturelle Dynamik in den USA nachgibt, wird die Wirtschaft in China durch strukturelle Probleme gebremst. Europa zeigt nach einer Stagnationsphase erste Anzeichen einer Erholung. Der Dienstleistungssektor treibt die weltwirtschaftliche Expansion an, und auch die Industrieproduktion, insbesondere in Schwellenländern, erholt sich teilweise. Dies zeigt sich im gestiegenen Warenhandel im ersten Halbjahr 2024, doch seit Sommer 2024 lässt die Dynamik wieder nach.

This paper examines the effect of CoCo bonds that qualify as additional tier 1 capital on bank stability and reporting. The results reveal a significant reduction in the distance to insolvency following the hybrid bond issuance due to increased earnings volatility. Banks report less stable net income due to more volatile loss provisions, which increases earnings opacity rather than reflects changes in asset quality. The findings are consistent with the premise that persistent uncertainty and misconceptions among investors about bail-in likelihoods limit their monitoring engagement, which results in banks becoming less transparent.