Should a redistributive government optimally subsidize education to provoke a reduction in the skill premium through general equilibrium effects on wages? To answer this question, this paper studies optimal linear and non-linear redistributive income taxes and education subsidies in two-type...

This paper explores how the specification of the earnings function impacts the optimal tax treatment of human capital. If education is complementary to labor effort, education should be subsidized to offset tax distortions on labor supply. However, if most of the education is enjoyed by high...

In this note, we show that labour market integration can be a double-edged sword. In the presence of local human capital externalities, integration and the ensuing agglomeration of skilled labour can cause a decline in human capital and the total wage sum (net of education costs). In particular,...

This article traces inequality and numeracy development in the regions of Chile during the 19th and early 20th century. Inequality, measured with anthropometric methods, was associated with a lower speed of human capital formation. Not all talents received the necessary education to make full...

This article analyzes the effect of public policy intervention in the production of health capital on fertility, private investment in children's health and education and human capital accumulation. I have used a growth model with endogenous fertility, in which the usual parental trade-off...

We study the importance of the extended family – the dynasty – for the persistence in inequality across generations. We use data including the entire Swedish population, linking four generations. This data structure enables us to identify parents’ siblings and cousins, their spouses, and...

We study the consequences of mothers' and fathers' job loss for parents, families, and children. Rich Swedish register data allow us to identify plant closures and account for non-random selection of workers to closing plants by using propensity score matching and controlling for...

This paper estimates the effect of home high-speed internet on national test scores of students at age 14. We combine comprehensive information on the telecom network, administrative student records, house prices and local amenities in England in a fuzzy spatial regression discontinuity design...

This paper provides a new measure of human capital using PISA and PIAAC surveys, and mean years of schooling. The new measure is a cohort-weighted average of past PISA scores (representing the quality of education) of the working age population and the corresponding mean years of schooling...

Elite skills have become crucial in today’s superstar economy. We develop a multi-period skillformation model where we show that individuals with temporary disadvantages must exert greater effort to gain access to elite education. This “underdog-incentive effect” implies that “educated...