When an employee expects repeated evaluation and performance incentives over time, the potential future rewards create an incentive to invest in building relevant skills. Because new skills benefit job performance, the effects of an evaluation program can persist after the rewards end or even...

We study the returns to experience in teaching, estimated using supervisor ratings from classroom observations. We describe the assumptions required to interpret changes in observation ratings over time as the causal effect of experience on performance. We compare two difference-in-differences...

We provide new evidence that cash transfers following the birth of a first child can have large and long-lasting effects on that child's outcomes. We take advantage of the January 1 birthdate cutoff for U.S. child-related tax benefits, which results in families of otherwise similar children...

US universities have attracted hundreds of thousands of international students each year for the last decade. Some of these remain in the US after graduating and contribute to the high skilled labor supply in US labor markets. In this paper, we identify and estimate by how much one more...

This paper studies aggregate labor market dynamics when workers have heterogeneous skills for tasks which are subject to non-uniform labor demand shocks. When workers have different skills, movements in aggregate wages partly reflect a reallocation of different workers across tasks and into...

We present new evidence on the long-run trend of occupational task content by race in the United States, 1900-2021. Black workers began the transition to better paid, cognitive-intensive modern jobs at least a generation after white workers; substantial convergence only occurred from 1960...

We use the labor market for doctorates in the biomedical sciences, where career dislocation is common, as a case study of skill-task mismatch and its consequences. Using longitudinal, worker-level data on biomedical doctorates, we investigate mismatch as an explanation for the negative pecuniary...

This paper reviews and synthesizes the literature on the macroeconomic implications of human capital theory. I begin with a review of the canonical model of education and the wage structure pioneered by Tinbergen (1975) and developed more fully by Goldin and Katz (2007). I also review...

We use a panel of survey responses linked to administrative data in Germany to measure the depreciation of skills while workers are unemployed. Both the reemployment hazard rate and reemployment earnings steadily fall with unemployment duration, and indicators of depression and loneliness rise...

We introduce new measurement tools to understand the sources of earnings differences across space. Based on the natural language employers use in job vacancy text, we develop granular measures of job tasks and of worker specialization. We find that jobs in larger commuting zones involve greater...