A stochastic earnings frontier approach to investigating labour market failures.

Summary This doctoral dissertation examines the major labor market failures that result in workers failing to earn the full potential compensation commensurate with their human capital. Wage inefficiency" occurs when the wage obtained is less than the maximum attainable. In such a case, employees receive a wage that is unfair in relation to the human capital available. This discourages investment in human capital, which tends to reduce total productivity, weaken competitiveness and harm the country's economic growth. The contribution that we make through this work is threefold. First, we propose a new perspective on the integration of young people into the labor market. Rather than examining whether or not individuals obtain a stable employment contract, we adopt an approach that focuses on the quality of the "job-skills" match of young people entering the labor market. Our work provides empirical results that highlight the different theories of job search. Second, because of the considerable challenge of identifying and assessing discriminatory practices in the labor market, we propose an innovative and effective approach to examine the glass ceiling phenomenon (invisible barrier to accessing higher-paying decision-making positions). In the last part of this thesis, we propose a theoretical econometric model that improves the correction of the selection bias problem for stochastic frontier models.