The aim of this paper is to study the impact of the size and the quality of social networks on the probability to find a job. We first develop a theoretical model in which individuals are embedded within a network of social relationships. Workers can obtain information about jobs via employed...

In this paper we consider the basic self-selection model for the effects of education, training, unions, and other activities on wages. We show that past models have ignored "heterogeneity of rewards" to the activity--i.e., differences across individuals in the rate of return to the activity--as...

This paper develops a procedure for testing the signaling hypothesis as advanced by Spence, et. al. The approach used is to examine directly the question of whether employers use education for purely informational purposes in their hiring decisions. An application of the method to a recruitment...

Using cultural transmission, we develop a model that gives some microfoundation to the impact of residential neighborhood on children's educational attainment and then test it using the UK National Child Development Study. We find that, for high-educated parents, the better the quality of the...