We propose an innovation-driven growth model in which education is determined by family background and cognitive ability. We show that compulsory schooling can move a society from elite education to mass education, which then triggers market R&D. This means that our model rationalizes two...

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...

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 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...

This paper offers an explanation for the widespread phenomenon of uniform public schooling, which is viewed here as a way for the government to precommit itself to restraints on future income redistribution. Such precommitment is likely to enhance accumulation of human capital, to bolster...

This paper studies empirically the effect of education policies on human capital and per capita income. The results suggest for European and OECD countries that higher attendance at pre-primary education, greater autonomy of schools and universities, a lower student-to-teacher ratio, higher age...

Elite skills have become crucial in today’s superstar economy. We develop a multi-period skill-formation 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...

Manpower constraints are the pervasive lack of specialized high- and low-skill workers, irrespective of the wage firms might offer. For a panel of German firms, we show manpower-constrained firms have higher capacity utilization and longer backlog of orders (measured in months). They are more...

This paper uses a new measure of human capital, which distinguishes both quality and quantity components, to estimate the long-term effect of the Covid-19-related school closures on aggregate productivity through the human capital channel. Productivity losses build up over time and are estimated...