Using a sample of high-school students from North Rhine-Westphalia, I find evidence that noncognitive skills significantly increase performance in school and success in professional life as well as happiness at age forty-three. Since test scores for cognitive skills are available for the...

In a two-period model with agent heterogeneity we analyze a pension reform toward a stronger link between contributions and benefits (as recently observed in several countries) in a pension system with a Bismarckian and a Beveridgian component. We show that such a policy change reduces the...

We analyse the impact of different immigration policies on human capital investment in a search-theoretic model. This class of model features unemployment and underinvestment in human capital. We show that an immigration policy aiming at well educated immigrants leads to rising educational...