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Economic outcomes are compared for university graduates in Israel belonging to four different ethnic groups. A unique data set is used that includes all individuals who graduated with a first degree from universities and colleges in Israel between the years 1995 and 2008 and which tracks them for up to ten years from the year they graduated. The main finding is that education and experience appear to have a strong effect on earnings in the long run and that an ethnic group can improve its position relative to certain groups while there is no effect relative to other groups. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors consider three of the main factors determining the success of assimilation: size of the ethnic group; cultural differences between groups and skin color; and examine how these factors affect economic outcomes. The authors use a unique data set that includes all individuals who graduated with a first degree from universities and colleges in Israel between the years 1995 and 2008.

The results obtained in this study show that on average native Jews attain the best economic outcomes, followed by FSU immigrants, Israeli Arabs and finally Ethiopian immigrants. Education and experience appear to have a strong effect on earnings in the long run. An ethnic group can improve its position relative to other groups as they accumulate work experience.

This is the first time that the Ethiopian immigrants where taken into account.

Cross-sectional studies have shown that immigrants' earnings tend to rise faster than those of comparable natives. One reason for this is the immigrant's acquisition of proficiency in the host country's native language. Immigrants can improve their knowledge of the host country language either by interacting with native speakers or by taking a formal language course. Focusing on Jewish immigrants in Israel from the Former Soviet Union (FSU), the present chapter examines an immigrant's decision to invest in learning Hebrew by participating in a formal government-sponsored course. The chapter estimates immigrants' lifetime earnings in order to identify those immigrants with the highest potential benefit from taking a Hebrew course and to determine whether they are more likely to attend one. The chapter finds that immigrants respond to pecuniary incentives to acquire the language of the host country and that this is particularly true for immigrants with 13+ years of schooling.

Previous studies of immigrant populations suggest that ceteris paribus an immigrant's level of income is strongly and positively correlated with his proficiency in the local language. The purpose of this paper is to extend this literature using data from a telephone survey carried out in 2005 among a representative sample of Former Soviet Union (FSU) immigrants. Unlike previous surveys, the data includes responses to detailed subjective questions on degree of social involvement, in addition to the number of years since migration and level of proficiency in the local language. The authors are able to demonstrate that a higher degree of assimilation is associated with a significantly higher likelihood of finding full-time employment. Moreover, the estimation results for the wage equation reveal that the effect on income previously attributed solely to language proficiency is in fact also the result of more successful assimilation in the receiving culture. The findings thus stress the importance of assimilation in determining success in job search and in explaining variations in income among immigrants who are already employed in full-time jobs. Finally, the results obtained when differentiating according to gender show that male immigrants have better prospects of finding a job than female immigrants and higher incomes once they find one, which is consistent with the existing literature.

In order to compare the relative importance of the language proficiency variable (LANGUAGE _i ) to that of the social involvement variable (ASSIMILATION _i ), The authors apply the probit model to two separate equations. The first is the prospects of finding a job and the second is the wage equation.

–The authors are able to demonstrate that a higher degree of assimilation is associated with a significantly higher likelihood of finding full-time employment. Moreover, the estimation results for the wage equation reveal that the effect on income previously attributed solely to language proficiency is in fact also the result of more successful assimilation in the receiving culture. The findings thus stress the importance of assimilation in determining success in job search and in explaining variations in income among immigrants who are already employed in full-time jobs. Finally, the results obtained when differentiating according to gender show that male immigrants have better prospects of finding a job than female immigrants and higher incomes once they find one, which is consistent with the existing literature.

The limitation is, like all of the existing literature and in particular the few studies that deal with social networking, that the database is exclusively based on either interviews or surveys consisting of self-assessment questions (such as, Dustman, 1996; Lazear, 1999; Amuedo-Dorantes and Mundra, 2007). Consequently, the implicit assumption is that the respondent's self-perceived level of assimilation constitutes a good proxy for the true level.

The implications are the following: the findings are thus consistent with those of Lazear (1999), who anticipates a negative correlation between the relative size of a minority group and the level of proficiency in the local language. In the case of Israel, which received a massive wave of 1.5 million immigrants from the FSU, the findings indeed suggest that the chances of an immigrant job seeker finding a job are far more dependent on his degree of assimilation than his level of language proficiency. Moreover, the effect of the degree of assimilation, which has not previously been included in estimations, was mistakenly attributed to language proficiency. The findings of this research thus reveal the importance of the degree of assimilation in finding a job and can explain income differences among those who have already found full-time employment.

Previous studies of immigrant populations suggest that ceteris paribus the level of income is strongly and positively correlated with proficiency in the local language. The current study extends this literature using data from a telephone survey carried out in 2005 among a representative sample of FSU immigrants. Unlike previous surveys, the data includes responses to detailed subjective questions on degree of social involvement, in addition to the number of years since migration and level of proficiency in the local language. The authors are able to demonstrate that a higher degree of assimilation is associated with a significantly higher likelihood of finding full-time employment. Moreover, the estimation results for the wage equation reveal that the effect on income previously attributed to language proficiency is in fact the result of more successful assimilation in the receiving culture. The results are robust to gender differences. The findings thus stress the importance of assimilation in determining success in job search and in explaining variations in income among immigrants who are already employed in full-time jobs.

Recent economic recession has highlighted the role of labour market flexibility as a key factor of competitiveness of a country. Despite the fact that labour mobility can essentially be seen as part of labour market flexibility, there is notable research gap concerning spatial mobility and other facets of labour market flexibility. The purpose of this special issue is to fill these gaps.

The papers in the special issue represent various quantitative methods and databases, whereas mainly micro data (workplace, labour force or immigrant surveys, job search portal, etc.) is used. However, the type of labour market flexibility addressed is both micro- and macro-level.

It is demonstrated that labour occupational mobility is determined by the business cycle, numerical flexibility, occupational categories, and sector. Spatial mobility may have counterintuitive effects on individual occupational mobility depending on gender and it is related to various flexibilities in the workplace. It is also suggested that different types of flexibilities on a firm level are interdependent of each other.

The special issue adds to the labour market related knowledge by integrating labour market flexibility and mobility. Individually, both phenomena have been studied before, but not much research is devoted to their inter-linkages. The special issue also contributes by examining labour market flexibility and spatial mobility in the context of different countries, economic cycles, and institutional settings.