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The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new data source available for researchers with interest in human resources management (HRM) and personnel economics, the Linked Personnel Panel (LPP).

The LPP is a longitudinal and representative employer-employee data set covering establishments in Germany and a subset of their workforce and is designed for quantitative empirical human resource research.

The LPP employee survey applies a number of established scales to measure job characteristics and job perceptions, personal characteristics, employee attitudes towards the organization and employee behaviour. This paper gives an overview of both the employer and employee survey and outlines the definitions, origins, and statistical properties of the scales used in the individual questionnaire.

The paper describes how researchers can access the data.

First, the data set combines employer and employee surveys that can be matched to each other. Second, it can also be linked to a number of additional administrative data sets. Third, the LPP covers a wide range of firms and workers from different backgrounds. Finally, because of its longitudinal dimension, the LPP should facilitate the study of causal effects of HRM practices.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the impact of fixed-term contracts (FTCs) on labour productivity, wages (i.e. labour cost), and productivity-wage gaps (i.e. profits).

The authors apply dynamic panel data techniques to detailed Belgian linked employer-employee panel data covering the period 1999-2006.

Results indicate that FTCs exert stronger positive effects on productivity than on wages and (accordingly) that the use of FTCs increases firms’ profitability.

This paper is one of the first to examine the FTC-productivity-wage nexus while addressing three important methodological issues related to the state dependency of the three explained variables, to firm time-invariant heterogeneity, and to the endogeneity of FTCs.

Many contributions to the educational mismatch literature address the productivity effects of both excess and deficit educational attainments for workers at the individual level. Due to the limited transferability of their results to establishment-level performance, especially when allowing for the possibility of spillover effects from mismatched workers to their well-matched colleagues, from an employer’s point of view, it is highly important to know the net effect of educationally mismatched employees on productivity at the establishment level. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper analyses the impact of overeducated and undereducated workers among an establishment’s workforce on its productivity, providing first representative evidence for Germany. Using linked employer-employee data from Germany, the author estimates dynamic panel production functions using a system GMM estimator.

The author finds that undereducated workers among an establishment’s workforce impair its (establishment-level) productivity, implying that an establishment’s HR management should avoid the recruitment of undereducated workers, at least if they follow a short-term personnel policy. The effect for overeducated employees is also negative, albeit small and insignificant.

The consideration of the phenomena of over and undereducation from the employer’s point of view provides further insight into the consequences of educational mismatch.

Direct marketing has developed rapidly over the last 15 years owing to technological change and developments in markets and marketing. In 1086 William the Conqueror created the Domesday Book as a record of what each individual owned. The concept developed by George Orwell in his 1984 novel was one of more sinister surveillance by “Big Brother”. Although marketing might not be seen in either light, it is certainly being manifested in at least a parallel manner. Personalised data are increasingly being integrated via data‐fusion to form the next phase of database provision ‐ biographic information. This paper provides a perspective on these developments and raises a variety of marketing and social responsibility issues that are likely to become salient as we move into a new millennium.

This paper explores the link between skill and qualification mismatch and labor productivity using cross-country industry data for 19 OECD countries. Utilizing mismatch indicators aggregated from micro-data sourced from the recent OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), the main results suggest that higher skill and qualification mismatch is associated with lower labor productivity, with over-skilling and under-qualification accounting for most of these impacts. A novel result is that higher skill mismatch is associated with lower labor productivity through a less efficient allocation of resources, presumably because when the share of over-skilled workers is higher, more productive firms find it more difficult to attract skilled labor and gain market shares at the expense of less productive firms. At the same time, a higher share of under-qualified workers is associated with both lower allocative efficiency and within-firm productivity – that is, a lower ratio of high productivity to low productivity firms. While differences in managerial quality can potentially account for the relationship between mismatch and within-firm productivity, the paper offers some preliminary insights into the policy factors that might explain the link between skill mismatch and resource allocation.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate empirically the relationship between workforce age, wage and productivity at the firm level.

Panel data techniques are applied to Belgian data on private sector workers and firms during 1999‐2006.

Results (robust to various potential econometric issues, including unobserved firm heterogeneity, endogeneity and state dependence) suggest that older workers are significantly less productive than prime age and young workers. In contrast, the productivity of middle‐aged workers is not found to be significantly different compared to young workers. Findings further indicate that average hourly wages within firms increase significantly with workers’ age. Overall, this leads to the conclusion that young (older) workers appear to be “underpaid” (“overpaid”).

These findings contribute to the growing literature on how the workforce age structure affects productivity and wages.

This study attempts to assess the role that institutional quality (IQ) plays in influencing inflows and outflows of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) for BRICS nations as burgeoning FDI is flowing into and out of these countries. Moreover, this paper explores the impact of individual governance indicators separately on the FDI flows.

The study analyses this nexus for these emerging economies for the period 1996–2019 using autoregressive distributed lag technique.

The study indicates a significant and positive coefficient for IQ in India and South Africa, suggesting that improving IQ would enhance the IFDI. However, for outward FDI (OFDI)–IQ linkage, the results show a negatively significant impact of IQ on OFDI for Brazil and Russia. Additionally, the authors observe control of corruption as a significant institutional component for attracting inward FDI for Brazil, India and South Africa, whereas it is an insignificant factor for Russia and China. Further, the authors notably find that upgrading the governance indicators will decrease the level of OFDI for Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa. On the contrary, findings suggest that improving the IQ will foster the OFDI for India.

This study uses time-series analysis instead of cross-country analysis (used extensively in literature), avoiding heterogeneity. Further, this study explores the IFDI–IQ link for BRICS nations, which are captivating a significant chunk of IFDI, and still not given much attention in the extant literature. Moreover, the authors identify the impact of IQ on the OFDI, neglected by the existing studies.

The purpose of this article is to report on sessions the author attended at the 2013 ASIS&T Conference.

The approach is an informal review of sessions and events the author attended.

This report condenses the author's notes from various events and sessions at the conference.

This is an original conference report written after attending the conference.

The authors provide first evidence regarding the direct effect of a hiring policy oriented through higher (over) education on firm productivity. Moreover, the authors shine light on the moderating role of the working environment of the firm, qualified as (1) high-tech/knowledge-intensive and (2) knowledge-intensive activities.

The authors use a detailed Belgian firm panel data and compute a measure of high-education hiring policy robust to sectorial bias.

The authors show that firms that decide to increase their hiring standards with a higher risk to hire overeducated workers are found to be more productive than others which follow the hiring norms in terms of educational levels. Concerning the role of the technological environment, the authors show that high-tech firms may take advantage of additional skills provided by highly educated workers to a bigger extent, such hiring policy leading to even higher productivity improvements.

Unlike much of the earlier literature (still essentially focussed on workers' wages, job satisfaction and related attitudes and behaviours), the authors’ econometric estimates are based on direct measures of productivity. They are also robust to a range of measurement issues, such as time-invariant labour heterogeneity and firm characteristics.