This paper argues that skill formation is a life-cycle process and develops the implications of this insight for Scottish social policy. Families are major producers of skills, and a successful policy needs to promote effective families and to supplement failing ones. Targeted early...

This paper provides a systematic analysis of identification in linear social interactions models. This is both a theoretical and an econometric exercise as the analysis is linked to a rigorously delineated model of interdependent decisions. We develop an incomplete information game that...

This paper studies the role of public policy to promote efficiency in human capital accumulation in the representative agent framework. Agents accumulate human capital by spending time in home study and in publicly provided schools. The individual faces an aggregate externality in the...

We study the joint role of altruism and impatience, and the impact of evolution in the formation of long-term time preferences and in the determination of optimal consumption and optimal bequests. We show how the consumption paths of dynasties relate to altruism and to impatience and we reason...