We completely characterize the set of second-best optimal “menus”of student-loan contracts in a simple economy with risky labour-market outcomes, adverse selection, moral hazard and risk aversion. The model combines structured student loans and an elementary optimal income-tax problem à la...

We completely characterize the set of second-best optimal "menus" of student-loan contracts in a simple economy with risky labour-market outcomes, adverse selection, moral hazard and risk aversion. The model combines structured student loans and an elementary optimal income-tax problem à la...

Single-sex classes within coeducational environments are likely to modify students' risk-taking attitudes in economically important ways. To test this, we designed a controlled experiment using first year college students who made choices over real-stakes lotteries at two distinct dates....

We propose to model individual educational investments as a rational decision, maximizing expected utility, conditional on some characteristics observed by the student, under the combined risks affecting future wages and schooling duration. Assuming that students' attitudes toward risk can be...

We model educational investment, wages and employment status (full-time, part-time or non-participation) in a frictional world in which heterogeneous workers have different productivities, both at home and in the workplace. We investigate the degree to which there might be under-employment and...

We use a quantile regression framework to investigate the degree to which work-related training affects the location, scale and shape of the conditional wage distribution. Human capital theory suggests that the percentage returns to training investments will be the same across the conditional...

This paper looks at the effect of quitting on the number of workers trained under conditions of uncertainty about future productivity when workers have both firm-specific and industry-specific skills. A new effect is found which works in the opposite direction to the undertraining result of...

This paper estimates the determinants of the number of work-related training courses, and their impact on expected wages growth, using longitudinal data from the British National Child Development Study. The analysis covers a crucial decade in the working lives of a cohort of young men – from...

This paper presents an empirical study of birth-order and sibship sex-composition effects on educational achievement, and uses these variables as instruments to estimate returns to education, with the help of a rich set of individual data. Our sample includes more than 12,000 men and 10,000...