I argue that distinguishing between life expectancy at birth and life expectancy beyond the crucial early childhood years affects the relationship between life expectancy and schooling in a meaningful way. In particular, I show that while the change in life expectancy at birth between 1960 and...

This paper uses firm level panel data of firm provided training to estimate its impact on productivity and wages. To this end the strategy proposed by Ackerberg, Caves and Frazer (2006) for estimating production functions to control for the endogeneity of input factors and training is applied....

This paper presents new evidence on the distribution of risk attitudes in the population, using a novel set of survey questions and a representative sample of roughly 22,000 individuals living in Germany. Using a question that asks about willingness to take risks in general, on an 11-point...

We propose a new theory of the demographic transition based on the evidence that body development during childhood is an important predictor of adult life expectancy. Fertility, childhood development, longevity, education and income growth all result from individual decisions. Parents face a...

This paper suggests that human capital externalities are important in determining whether goods and services should be privately or publicly provided. We study situations where that the cost incurred by an individual provider for providing quality is affected by the human capital of her...

This paper derives a model in which workers have firm-specific and industry-specific skills, and in each period there is a non-zero probability that a worker quits. This makes the private discount factor, used by firms in making decisions about hiring and training new workers and firing existing...

Advocates of apprenticeship programmes often argue as if it is simply a matter of historical accident that such investment by US firms has been hindered. This paper explores the structure of incentives underpinning the German system of apprenticeship training. First, we describe three...

This paper studies the impact of income inequality on fiscal conservatism when an increase in inequality affects the bottom portion of income distribution. It is argued that, contrary to what is generally assumed in the economic literature, inequality will then be associated with less, rather...

This paper develops and estimates a human capital model of wage growth based on learning by doing. Learning by doing rates are assumed to be heterogeneous and firms offer different career structures in terms of the rate of acquisition of firm specific human capital. The model is estimated using...

In this paper we relate trends in the accumulation of human capital in Britain, Germany and the United States to overall production strategy and productivity trends. In the United States a strategy of standardized mass production led to high levels of labour productivity and concentration on the...