We draw on quantitative and descriptive data from Robert Campbell's widely cited manual for prospective apprentices, The London Tradesman (1747), to demonstrate the responsiveness of apprenticeship in mid-eighteenth century London to market forces of supply and demand. We regress apprenticeship...

This paper examines the impact of the decline in maternal mortality on fertility and women's human capital. Fertility theory suggests that a permanent decline in maternal mortality initially increases fertility and generates a permanent rise in women's human capital, relative to men. The...

Rising costs of and returns to college have led to sizeable increases in the demand for student loans in many countries. In the U.S., student loan default rates have also risen for recent cohorts as labor market uncertainty and debt levels have increased. We discuss these trends as well as...

This paper presents a unified theory of human capital with both health capital and, what we term, skill capital endogenously determined within the model. By considering joint investment in health capital and in skill capital, the model highlights similarities and differences in these two...

We estimate the contemporaneous effect of education on adolescent crime by exploiting the variation in crime rates between different cohorts and at different ages that followed a reform that raised the school-leaving age in Italy. A 1 percentage-point increase of the enrollment rate reduces...

We examine the relationship between education and mortality in a young population of Italian males. In 1981 several cohorts of young men from specific southern towns were unexpectedly exempted from compulsory military service after a major quake hit the region. Comparisons of exempt cohorts from...

We study the role of human capital in the restructuring of the Italian economy. The share of university graduates in the population has long been far lower in Italy (12 per cent in 2007) that in the rest of Europe (24 per cent). The 3+2 reform of Italian degree programmes has significantly...

The formation of human capital is important for a society's welfare and economic success. Recent literature shows that child health can provide an important explanation for disparities in children's human capital development across different socio-economic groups. While this literature focuses...

We review studies of the impact of credit constraints on the accumulation of human capital. Evidence suggests that credit constraints are increasingly important for schooling and other aspects of households' behavior. We highlight the importance of early childhood investments, since their...