We argue that the narrative of variety-induced gains from trade in differentiated goods needs revision. If producing differentiated varieties of a good requires differentiated skills and if the work force is heterogeneous in these skills, then firms are likely to have monopsony power. We show...

We compare performance in a word based creativity task under three incentive schemes: a flat fee, a linear payment and a tournament. Furthermore, we also compare performance under two control tasks (Raven's advanced progressive matrices or a number-adding task) with the same treatments. In all...

This paper uses teacher assessments at age 16 in Norwegian comprehensive schools to measure different types of skills. While we follow the literature and interpret test scores in Mathematics and Science as proxy for cognitive skills, we use a novel measure for another type of skills: Performance...

This paper sheds light on how changes in the organization of work can help to understand increasing wage inequality. We present a theoretical model in which workers with a wider span of competence (higher level of multitasking) earn a wage premium. Since abilities and opportunities to expand the...

We study the interaction between the optimal immigration policy of a host country and education policy of a source country in a model of international migration of skilled workers. Acquisition of human capital is driven by the academic and career opportunities at home and abroad. Greater...

The US experienced two dramatic changes in the structure of education in a fifty year period. The first was a large expansion of educational attainment; the second, an increase in test score gaps between college bound and non-college bound students. We study the impact of these two trends on the...

Theories of market failures and targeting motivate the promotion of entrepreneurship training programs and generate testable predictions regarding heterogeneous treatment effects from such programs. Using a large randomized evaluation in the United States, we find no strong or lasting effects on...

We investigate the theoretical relationship between wage concentration and international market integration. Access to imported varieties lowers the cost of intermediate inputs (“machines”) used to carry out production tasks, causing workers with different comparative abilities to be sorted...

We introduce unemployment and endogenous selection of workers into different skill-classes in a trade model with two sectors and heterogeneous firms. This allows us to study the distributional consequences and the skill-specific unemployment effects of trade liberalization. We show that the...

We propose a theory of skill mobility across cities. It predicts the well documented city size-wage premium: the wage distribution in large cities first-order stochastically dominates that in small cities. Yet, because this premium is reflected in higher house prices, this does not necessarily...