Exploiting variation in welfare reform across states and over time and using relevant comparison groups, this study estimates the effects of welfare reform on an important source of human capital acquisition among women at risk for relying on welfare: vocational education and training. The...

This paper develops a model of skill formation that explains a variety of findings established in the child development and child intervention literatures. At its core is a technology that is stage-specific and that features self productivity, dynamic complementarity and skill multipliers....

In this paper we study how aggregate output responds to the arrival of a new General Purpose Technology (GPT) by looking at adjustment mechanisms that operate through labor markets. We show that under a wide set of circumstances the arrival of a new GPT that raises long-run output can trigger a...

The current high rates of return to human capital stimulate a supply response via increased investments in education and training. The so increased human capital stock exerts downward pressures on the rates of return that reduce the skill differential in wages. This paper reports estimates of:...

Most of our productive knowledge was handed down to us by previous generations. The transfer of knowledge from the old to the young is therefore a cornerstone of productivity growth. We study this process in a model in which the old sell knowledge to the young - - old workers train the young,...

This paper demonstrates that even under ideal conditions, social experiments in general only uniquely determine the mean impacts of programs but not the median or the distribution of program impacts. The conventional common parameter evaluation model widely used in econometrics is one case where...

This paper compares and contrasts the structure of pest school training for young nonuniversity graduates in Britain and the United States. We utilize two unique longitudinal surveys in these countries on young people to examine four issues: the extent of pest school training in Britain and the...

Firms may be reluctant to provide general training if workers can quit and use their gained skills elsewhere. "Training contracts" that impose a penalty for premature quitting can help alleviate this inefficiency. Using plausibly exogenous contractual variation from a leading trucking firm, we...