There is plenty of individual-level evidence, based on the estimation of Mincerian equations, showing that better-educated individuals earn more. This is usually interpreted as a proof that education raises labour productivity. Some macroeconomists, analysing cross-country time series, also...

In the last decades, OECD labor markets faced important labor supply changes with the arrival of women and the cohorts of the baby-boom. Using a survey where workers declare their true employment experience, this paper argues that these supply trends imply more inexperienced workers. It then...

Human capital plays an important role in the theory of economic growth, but it has been difficult to measure this abstract concept. We survey the psychological literature on cross-cultural IQ tests, and conclude that modern intelligence tests are well-suited for measuring an important form of a...

American students work less than East Asian students in high school, but work more in college. We propose an explanation for this puzzle, using a two-stage-signaling model. Signaling can occur over time both in high school and college. We show that main signaling stage may be high school or...

This paper aims at explaining why countries with comparable levels of education still experience notable differences in terms of R&D and innovation. High skilled migration, ultimately linked to differences in R&D costs, might be responsible for the persitence of such a gap. In fact, in a model...

This paper provides an additional channel through which inequality may influence growth, when labor migration is taken into account. In fact, we show that human capital distribution is crucial to determine whether allowing migration of the most skilled workers from a developing country may be...