Four Essays on International Trade and Labour Markets

The following dissertation is a collection of four stand-alone research papers. The common theme of all papers is the analysis of the decision of heterogeneous individuals about investing in education. The first paper analyses how these decisions affect the impact of globalisation or technological change on the income distribution. The second and the third paper focus on the distributional effects of human-capital investments in the presence of immigration. The fourth paper discusses the interplay of globalisation and alternative formulations of the institutional framework of the educational system.