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,...

Government or company decisions on whom to hire are mostly delegated to politicians, public sector officials or human resources and procurement managers. Due to anti-corruption laws, agents cannot sell contracts or positions that they are delegated to decide upon. Even if bribing is ruled out,...

This paper studies how social relationships between managers and employees affect relational incentive contracts. To this end we develop a simple dynamic principal-agent model where both players may have feelings of altruism or spite toward each other. The contract may contain two types of...

We investigate externalities in higher education enrollment over the course of development in a two-sector model. Each sector works with only one type of labor, skilled or unskilled, and individuals are differentiated according to their cost of acquiring human capital. Both sectors exhibit...

While interest in social determinants of individual behavior has led to a rich theoretical literature and many efforts to measure these influences, a mature "social econometrics" has yet to emerge. This chapter provides a critical overview of the identification of social interactions. We...

We consider a nonparametric test for the null of seasonal unit roots in quarterly time series that builds on the RUR (records unit root) test by Aparicio, Escribano, and Sipols. We find that the test concept is more promising than a formalization of visual aids such as plots by quarter. In order...

This paper uses an overlapping generations framework to analyze the implications of different financing regimes in the education sector for human capital formation and economic welfare. Agents privately invest in education after they have received a noisy information signal about their...

The desirability for production efficiency is re-examined in this study, where agents choose occupation based on lifetime income net of tuition costs. Efficient revenue raising implies that the government should trade off efficiency in production for efficiency in intertemporal consumption, as...

Katz and Rapoport (2005) conclude that with linear production technology and the possibility of unilateral migration, region-specific shocks may increase the average level of education. Previously, Poutvaara (2000) derived a corresponding result with Cobb-Douglas technology and migration which...