Education and training are key to explain the current competitive strengths of national economies. While in the past educational and training institutions were often seen as providers of necessary skills for national economies, this view has changed, with education and training now being seen as a key ingredient for international competitiveness. This collection of papers on various aspects of the economics of education and training reflects this new interest.

Quantile regression has emerged as an essential statistical tool of contemporary empirical economics and biostatistics. Complementing classical least squares regression methods which are designed to estimate conditional mean models, quantile regression provides an ensemble of techniques for estimating families of conditional quantile models, thus offering a more complete view of the stochastic relationship among variables. This volume collects 12 outstanding empirical contributions in economics and offers an indispensable introduction to interpretation, implementation, and inference aspects of quantile regression.

In a number of European economies youth unemployment has increased again to unexpected and unwanted levels. It has become one of the pressing labor market problems that many countries are currently facing. This special issue involves a collection of current research and new findings. The contributions improve our understanding of the determinants and economic consequences of youth unemployment and implications for policies to combat it

Education and training are key to explain the current competitive strengths of national economies. While in the past educational and training institutions were often seen as providers of necessary skills for national economies, this view has changed, with education and training now being seen as a key ingredient for international competitiveness. This collection of papers on various aspects of the economics of education and training reflects this new interest.

For some time, it has been debated whether a lack of wage flexibility is at the roots of the high and persistent unemployment in West Germany. In the presence of a skill bias in labor demand, which increases the relative de mand for more highly skilled labor over time, there only seems to exist the choice between higher wage inequality or higher unemployment rates. This study scrutinizes whether and in what way this line of thought is consis tent with empirical findings for West Germany. The analysis ranges from extensive descriptive evidence on wage trends to the estimation of a struc tural model of wage bargaining. As the most important database, I use the IAB-Beschiiftigtenstichprobe from 1975 to 1990. This study was accepted as a Habilitation thesis by the Department of Economics and Statistics of the University of Konstanz in October 1998. The only major change relates to appendix B on the block bootstrap procedure now summarizing the main aspects of the method. I am very grateful to my advisor Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Franz for his support, encouragement, and inspiration. From 1993 to 1997, he ran the Center for International Labor Economics at the University of Konstanz in such a way that it provided a fruitful environment for empirical research in labor economics. I am also indebted to Prof. Dr. Winfried Pohlmeier and to Prof. Dr. Gerd Ronning for undertaking the task to evaluate my Habilitation thesis."

Quantile regression has emerged as an essential statistical tool of contemporary empirical economics and biostatistics. Complementing classical least squares regression methods which are designed to estimate conditional mean models, quantile regression provides an ensemble of techniques for estimating families of conditional quantile models, thus offering a more complete view of the stochastic relationship among variables. This volume collects 12 outstanding empirical contributions in economics and offers an indispensable introduction to interpretation, implementation, and inference aspects of quantile regression.