The paper analyses alternative investment policies and their consequences for the evolution of human capital in Europe based on a model of age dependent skill formation where the life span depends on investments during childhood. What makes the approach special is the analysis of the returns to...

In this study, we try to connect the economic literature on human capital formation with findings from neurobiology and psychology on early childhood development and self-regulation. Our basic framework for assessing the distribution of agespecific returns to investment in skills is an...

This paper examines the impact of parental investments on the development of cognitive, mental and emotional skills during childhood using data from a longitudinal study, the Mannheim Study of Children at Risk, starting at birth. Our work offers three important innovations. First, we use...

This paper investigates the role of self-productivity and home resources in capability formation from infancy to adolescence. In addition, we study the complementarities between basic cognitive, motor and noncognitive abilities and social as well as academic achievement. Our data are taken from...

Many children grow up with parents working abroad. Economists are interested in the achievement and well-being of these "home alone" children to better understand the positive and negative aspects of migration in the sending countries. This paper examines the causal effects of parents' migration...

In this paper, human capital investments are evaluated by assuming heterogeneous returns to education. We use the potential outcome approach to measure the causal effect of human capital investments on earnings as a continuous treatment effect. Empirical evidence is based on a sample of West...