This paper investigates the effects of firm entry deregulation. We exploit a recent reform that simplified business entry in Portugal as a quasi-natural experiment. We use cross-municipality-year variation in the implementation of the reform for identification. Using matched employer-employee...

Due to the presence of borrowing constraints in the market, the cost of educating the young members of a family is often borne by the adults. We consider intrafamily financing of human capital under the assumptions that individuals are selfish and binding contracts are not feasible. Cooperation...

This Paper studies the optimal education policy in the presence of different groups of households, with groups differing in the distribution of the ability to benefit from education. The main result is that the high ability individuals from groups with relatively few high ability individuals...

This paper investigates whether patent counts can be taken as indicators of macroeconomic innovation performance. The empirical model explicitly accounts for the two components of patenting output: research productivity and patent propensity. The empirical analysis aims at explaining the...

We develop a competitive model of trade between countries with similar aggregate factor endowments. The trade pattern reflects differences in the distribution of talent across the labour forces of the two countries. The country with a relatively homogeneous population exports the good produced...

We provide an assessment of the French ZEP (Zones d’Education Prioritaire), a programme started in 1982 that channels additional resources to schools in disadvantaged areas and encourages the development of new teaching projects. Focusing on middle-schools, we first evaluate the impact of the...

This Paper studies the design of education policies in a setting of successive generations with heterogeneous individuals (high and low earning ability). Parents’ investment in education is motivated by warm-glow altruism and determines the probability that a child has high ability. Education...

We investigate whether acquiring more education when young has long-term effects on risk-taking behavior in financial markets and whether the effects spill over to spouses and children. There is substantial evidence that more educated people are more likely to invest in the stock market....

Incentives to invest in higher education are affected by both the direct wage effect of human capital investments and the indirect wage effect resulting from lower unemployment risks and shorter spells in unemployment associated with higher educated. We analyse the returns to education in...

In this paper we make a systematic presentation of returns to education in Austria for the period 1981-1997. We use consistent cross-sections from the Mikrozensus and find falling returns over time. These falling returns are not caused by changes in the sample design and reduced willingness to...