J24 - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor ProductivityReturn

This study examines the role of age in the selection and promotion of employees within public and private organizations, with a particular focus on Czech organizations. The research investigates the impact of age on career advancement across various industries and regions, aiming to provide insights into potential age-related biases in the workplace. The study utilizes a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative analysis of promotion rates with qualitative insights from organizational representatives. Despite the intriguing nature of the topic, the study faces several challenges, including a relatively low number of respondents and limited data availability. Nevertheless, the findings shed light on the complexities of age-related dynamics in the workplace, highlighting the need for further research and potential interventions to promote equity and fairness in career advancement processes.

Psychological traits have received significant attention in labour market research in recent decades. Unfortunately, empirical evidence remains limited for some psychological traits and their interactions. To address this gap, we conduct a representative survey of employees, assessing competitiveness, persistence, and risk tolerance using single-item scales. This comprehensive study sheds light on the connection between these traits and wages. Our results confirm that individuals possessing these traits tend to earn higher wages, even when we account for indirect factors, such as higher educational attainment and better job positions. It also suggests that competitiveness and risk tolerance are particularly valuable for individuals with middle and high incomes, while persistence is valuable for those with low and middle incomes. These findings support the systematic development of competitiveness, persistence, and risk tolerance through education and sporting activities.

The study estimates the size of the gender pay gap (GPG) for the Czech Republic in the years 2006-2017 using data from the EU-SILC survey. The size of the GPG (and the related variables) remains relatively time-invariant with a statistically weak relation to the business cycle. Using the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, we found out that the unexplained part of the GPG amounts to 50% of the whole GPG (on average) and only one third of the GPG is caused by an endowment effect or an interaction between the endowment effect and the coefficient effect. Selection bias plays a statistically insignificant role in terms of the GPG formation and explanation. Parenthood is the most important driver of the GPG. For parents, the GPG is about 30 percentage points higher than the one for non-parents. Women are able to narrow the GPG created by the effect of motherhood and reach original unexplained levels of approximately 15% after reaching the age of 50 and higher. Besides parenthood, there is no other demographic characteristic that has any substantial impact on the formation and persistence of the GPG. The GPG is most pronounced for the lowest- and the highest-earning quantiles, indicating the existence of a glass ceiling and a sticky floor on the Czech labour market.

This paper is a case study on the influence of students working during their studies and its impacts on their employability after graduation. Data for this research were collected at a private business university in Prague, the Czech Republic. The aim of the paper is to identify approaches of business university graduates to employment during their study and to evaluate the role of students' employment in their future career. A partial aim is to evaluate relations between student employment and future job position. The data were obtained through primary research: a questionnaire survey, two in-depth interviews and four focus groups. The results show that practical training during studies does affect applicability of study results, but graduates are not promoted immediately after their university graduation regardless of their gender. The only disadvantages mentioned re- garded demands on time. In the qualitative research, graduates most often reported de-mands on family support, time, problem coping and necessity of such behaviour.

This study purpose is a questionnaire development used to quantify survey interviewer cha- racteristics. Five dimensions of personality were used: conscientiousness, extraversion, agree-ableness, emotional stability and openness. Those dimensions where measured using a Likert scale with 6 points. In total, 107 survey interviewers from a branch of private companies specialized in public opinion research answered the questionnaire's questions. Reliability of the questionnaire was assessed by internal consistency. A preliminary list of 25 items was prepared as a starting point. After evaluation of validity, five items were rejected. The new measurement instrument with 20 items was finally developed. The content validity index for the final questionnaire was found acceptable. Results showed that final questionnaire was internally consistent.

This paper analyses temporary work and job satisfaction among salaried workers during the Spanish economic crisis of 2008. Using data from the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE) 2013 Economically Active Population Survey (EAPS), we find that temporary workers lost their job more than others during this period. However, salaried workers have higher average levels of satisfaction in 2007-2010, possibly due to the lower requirements of workers. We find a positive relationship between the unlikeliness of keeping a job and low job satisfaction levels in data from the Survey of Quality of Life at Work (2010) through a correspondence analysis. A linear model with a level of job satisfaction as a dependent variable shows negative coefficients for a level of job satisfaction if the probability of keeping the job is somewhat unlikely or very unlikely. Finally, an ordinal probit regression finds that the estimated likelihood to reach high job satisfaction is lower in temporary workers.

Work incentives are closely related to production performance. This paper presents evidence that the value added of a firm increases when relative labour wage rises, or the level of unemployment increases. Both circumstances imply evidence in favour of the efficiency wage model. This theory is consistent with the views of many managers and personal administrators, who tend to ascribe primary importance to wage setting as an incentive to increase effort. We use a micro panel data set of Spanish manufacturing firms for the period 2004-2009 to simultaneously estimate a stochastic frontier of a firm's value added and the inefficiency determinants. The data source is published in the Spanish Industrial Survey on Business Strategies (Encuesta sobre Estrategias Empresariales, ESEE) collected by the Fundación SEPI.

The paper is devoted to gender wage differences; it especially focuses on the impact of the gender characteristics of the manager on gender wage disparity. Under the social identity theory, women in managerial positions, that can affect the wage of their subordinates, are likely to evaluate female employees better than male employees. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of the gender characteristics of middle managers on the wages of directly subordinated rank-and-file employees using a variation within the firm. We have used two methods to consider the effect of the manager gender characteristics on subordinates: the estimation of the wage function and the average treatment effect on the treated, both supplemented by a matching procedure. We concluded that women in middle management in comparison to their male counterparts have a lower tendency to apply wage discrimination against women. The presence of a female head of department led to a decrease in the gender pay gap by almost 7 percentage points.

Knowledge of employers' requirements on competencies of job applicants is highly important in the process of human capital accumulation. This paper focuses on the general competencies since they can be applied in a wide range of jobs or tasks and increase an individual's employability. First, employers' requirements on general competencies are identified and described on the basis of 3,822 job advertisements published online. Second, the econometric analysis is used in order to test hypothesis whether examined demand for general competencies is really general or if it differs significantly with respect to required education and firm characteristics. The results of our probit regressions proved that the requirements on examined general skills significantly differ according to the education required and some categories of NACE and ownership of the firms.

In this paper, we conduct the simple comparative static analysis of the environmental and economic effects of the government and producer services sector's training of rural-urban migrants. We mainly focus our attention on environmental issues and reach the following conclusions: When the government lowers the interest rate of training loans, environmental conditions will worsen. However, when the producer services sector increases the unit cost of training rural labour, the opposite effect occurs, and environmental conditions will improve. In addition, we discuss the conditions under which a government reduction in the interest rate of training loans will lead to the reduction of pollution damage to agricultural production and a decrease in social utility.

This paper aims to quantify the basic structure of gender wage gaps in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, using the EU-SILC 2008 dataset. The structure of the gender wage gap is analyzed based on the Heckman selection model and Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition. The findings are to a great extent similar for the Czech and Slovak Republics. The observed gender wage gap is relatively high in these two countries, compared to Hungary and Poland. A relatively small but positive part of the observed gender wage gap can be explained by gender differences in characteristics in the Czech and Slovak Republics, with a high contribution of job characteristics. An opposite result proved in Hungary and Poland, where working women have on average even better characteristics than working men, mainly in terms of individual characteristics.

In this paper we investigate the possibilities of investing in human capital at the financial market of the Czech Republic. In particular, the conditions for this investment would be different among individuals due to the difference of bequest amount and the credit market condition in financing the money for human capital investment or education. There is also higher risk for possible investors in determining individuals' income and in adverse selection. Our paper deals with the possibilities of avoiding these problems and we use our data from the survey of Czech universities students' earnings expectations collected during the years 2002 - 2004. We use expected returns to education of the Czech higher education students as a benchmark for creating student loans and human capital contracts models. Financial market and institutions should offer different ways of financial assistance. However, financial market of the Czech Republic is not prepared for this type of investment.