In this paper, we examine the general equilibrium implications of human capital accumulation in the presence of superstar markets, in which small differences in skill translate into huge differences in earnings. Previous research has concentrated on the microeconomic wage implications of...

This appendix of our paper, "Demographic Change, Human Capital and Welfare", contains further material that could not be included in the paper due to space limitations. It is organized as follows. Section A contains the formal equilibrium definition. Section B provides more results on the fit of...

This paper examines the extent to which intergenerational links through transfers of wealth and investment in human capital might help in accounting for the wealth inequality observed in U.S. data. We examine an overlapping-generations heterogeneous agents economy with idiosyncratic risk and...

We study the structure of optimal wedges and wealth taxes in a Mirrleesian economy with endogenous skills. Human capital is a private state variable that drives the skill process of each individual. Building on the findings of the labor literature, we assume that human capital investment is a)...

I show that in a conventional Ramsey model, between one-fourth and one-half of the global income distribution can be explained by a single factor: The effect of large, persistent differences in national average IQ on the private marginal product of labor. Thus, differences in national average IQ...

College attainment differs nearly two-fold across U.S. states. This paper shows that highly educated states employ skill-biased technologies, specialize in skill-intensive industries, but do not pay lower skill premia. A theory based on agglomeration economies is developed to account for these...

Barriers to trade lead to significant distortions in domestic prices and cause an inefficient allocation of resources across sectors. An expected outcome of a trade reform is a significant sectoral reallocation of labor in the economy. The amount and speed of the reallocation, however, will also...

his paper presents formal models of child development that capture the essence of recent findings from the empirical literature on child development. The goal is to provide theoretical frameworks for interpreting the evidence from a vast empirical literature, for guiding the next generation of...

We develop a lifecycle human capital investment model in an overlapping generations environment. Investments in human capital can be made at different ages and are subject to different constraints on the individual and family. We explore empirical evidence on the complementarity of investments...