Empirical studies assume that the macro Mincer return on schooling is constant across countries. Using a large sample of countries this paper shows that countries with a better quality of education have on average relatively higher macro Mincer coefficients. As rich countries have on average...

We investigate the determinants of regional development using a newly constructed database of 1569 sub-national regions from 110 countries covering 74 percent of the world’s surface and 96 percent of its GDP. We combine the cross-regional analysis of geographic, institutional, cultural, and...

This paper analyzes the effect of immigration on wages taking into account human capital and labor supply adjustments. Using U.S. micro-data for 1967-2007, I estimate a labor market equilibrium model that includes endogenous decisions on education, participation, and occupation, and allows for...

We build a model where investments in human capital depend on the state of an individual's social network. We show that correlation patterns between parents' and children's human capital investment and income depend on the structure of their social network. Heavier reliance on the social network...

In this paper we compare two historical scenarios very different one to each other both in institutional and geographical terms. What they have in common is the situation of relative poverty of most of the population. On the one side we are dealing with historical industrializing Catalonia in...

Over the past two decades, technological progress in the United States has been biased towards skilled labor. What does this imply for business cycles? We construct a quarterly skill premium from the CPS and use it to identify skill-biased technology shocks in a VAR with long-run restrictions....

We survey a number of papers that have focused on the construction of cross-country data sets on average years of schooling. We discuss the construction of the different series, compare their profiles and construct indicators of their information content. The discussion focuses on a sample of...

This paper provides regression discontinuity evidence on long-run and intergenerational education impacts of a temporary increase in federal transfers to local governments in Brazil. Revenues and expenditures of the communities benefiting from extra transfers temporarily increased by about 20%...

In this paper we present: 1. The available data on comparative gender inequality at the macroeconomic level and 2. Gender inequality measures at the microeconomic and case study level. We see that market openness has a significant effect on the narrowing of the human capital gender gap....

This paper asserts that the accumulation of capital causes cross-country differences in GDP per capita by generating disparities in the sectoral structure. For that purpose, we characterize the dynamic equilibrium of an endogenous growth that exhibits sectoral change due to the introduction of...