We exploit rules of class formation to identify the causal effect of increasing the number of immigrants in a classroom on natives test scores, keeping class size constant (Pure Composition Effect). We explain why this is a relevant policy parameter although it has been neglected so far. We show...

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...

Immigration is an important problem in many societies, and it has wide-ranging eects on the educational systems of host countries. There is a now a large empirical literature, but very little theoretical work on this topic. We introduce a model of family immigration in a framework where school...

Under communism, workers had their wages set according to a centrally-determined wage grid. In this paper we use new micro data on men to estimate returns to human capital under the communist wage grid and during the transition to a market economy. We use data from the Czech Republic because it...

This paper explores the implications of the ongoing reorganization of firms for inequality in the labour market. We show how recent technological advances in physical and human capital can lead to the breakdown of occupational barriers, creating demands for new combinations of skills, and...

This Paper claims that technical progress induces early retirement of older workers. It supports this claim both theoretically and empirically. We present a model where part of human capital is technology-specific, so that technical progress erodes some existing human capital. This affects...

In this Paper, we analyse the extent to which market forces create an incentive for cloning human beings. We show that a market for cloning arises if a large enough fraction of the clone's income can be appropriated by its model. Only people with the highest ability are cloned, while people at...

The paper contains a thorough review of explanations for the weak British growth performance of the 1950s through the 1970s and an assessment of the long-term implications of the 1980s attempt to escape from relative decline. The analysis draws on recent work in growth theory and places...

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....