This paper develops a dynamic general equilibrium model to highlight the role of human capital accumulation of agents differentiated by skill type in the joint determination of social mobility and the skill premium. We first show that our model captures the empirical co-movement of the skill...

A growing theoretical literature on the effect of politicians' salaries on the average level of skills of political candidates yields ambiguous predictions. In this paper, we estimate the effect of pay for politicians on the level of education of parliamentary candidates. We take advantage of an...

The purpose of this paper is to assess intergenerational occupational mobility in Germany. Using data from the Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP), we find a high persistence of occupational choices across fathers and children. To separate effects related to parental advice and influence (nurture) from...

In this study we analyze whether the gender composition of siblings within a family affects the choice of College Major. The question is whether a family environment that is more gender-homogeneous encourages academic choices that are less gender stereotyped. We use the last name and the exact...

We present the first evidence that international emigrant selection on education and earnings materializes through occupational skills. Combining novel data from a representative Mexican task survey with rich individual-level worker data, we find that Mexican migrants to the United States have...

This paper analyzes the relationship between spatial mobility and social mobility. It develops a two-skill-type spatial equilibrium model of two regions with location preferences where each region consists of an urban area which is home to workplaces and residences and an exclusively residential...

In an overlapping generations model with two social classes, rich and poor, parents of the different social classes vote on two issues: redistributive policies for them and education investment for their children. Public education is the engine for growth through its effect on human capital; but...

This paper examines the potential output gains from the implementation of optimal teacher incentive pay schemes, by calibrating the Hölmstrom and Milgrom (1987) hidden action model using data from Muralidharan and Sundararaman (2011), a teacher incentive pay experiment implemented in Andhra...

It is recognised that expressive preferences may play a major role in determining voting decisions because the low probability of being decisive in elections undermines standard instrumental reasoning. Expressive and instrumental preferences may deviate and in electoral settings it is more...

This paper studies a two-region model in which unemployment, education decisions and interregional migration are endogenous. The poorer region exhibits both lower wages and higher unemployment rates, and migrants to the richer region are disproportionately skilled. The brain drain from the poor...