Using the NLSY data set, this paper formulates and then empirically estimates the production processes for social, motivational and cognitive skills during early childhood development and the long-term effects of these skills on learning and life-time earnings of an individual. Using these...

Due to a tax law implemented in 1998, Dutch employers can claim an extra tax deduction when they train employees aged 40 years or older. This causes a discontinuity in a firm's cost of training an employee. We exploit this discontinuity to identify two effects: the effect of the tax deduction on...

The paper proposes an alternative methodology for testing signalling hypothesis based on chances to get a job in a particular class of the job market. The individuals are ranked and matched by an external mechanism, based on preferences of employers in respect to actual observable and perceived...

Econometric simulations provide no evidence that families in West Virginia encouraged sons to drop out of high school in order to earn income as coal miners, at the net expense of later income that they would have earned with more education. Estimates of the typical family's subjective rate of...

The paper analyses a two-sector model of endogenous growth with two common features of economic development: stages of sustained growth and underdevelopment traps. The model also demonstrates the transitional issues of a temporary underdevelopment trap, seemingly sustainable growth, and a...

Human capital plays an important role in the theory of economic growth, but it has been difficult to measure this abstract concept. We survey the psychological literature on cross-cultural IQ tests, and conclude that modern intelligence tests are well-suited for measuring an important form of a...

In this paper, we study the return to human capital variables for wages of workers observed in Tunisian matched worker-firm data in 1999. This tells us how returns to human capital in a Less Developed Country like Tunisia differ from the industrial countries usually studied with matched data. We...

I study the consequences of heterogeneity of skills for the design of an optimal unemployment insurance, using a principal-agent set-up with a risk neutral insurer and infinitely lived risk averse agents. Agents, who are characterised by different productivities or skills, are employed by firms...

Aggregate productivity growth can be decomposed into growth within establishments, between establishments, and the impact of entering and exiting establishments. We demonstrate that such a productivity decomposition formula can also be used for studying intraestablishment restructuring through...

Two alternative models of parental investments in children's human capital are considered and tested empirically using the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS). The pure loan model and the reciprocity with two-sided altruism model yield different predictions about the effect of children's...