This paper advances a novel hypothesis regarding the historical roots of labor emancipation. It argues that the decline of coercive labor institutions in the industrial phase of development has been an inevitable by-product of the intensification of capital-skill complementarity in the...

I analyze the impact of a low-wage trade shock on manufacturing workers in a high-wage country, Denmark, and how they adjust to the shock over a decade across all potential adjustment margins, in the labor market and outside. My research illustrates the importance of industry-specific human...

The research explores the effect of industrialization on human capital formation. Exploiting exogenous regional variations in the adoption of steam engines across France, the study establishes that in contrast to conventional wisdom that views early industrialization as a predominantly...

This paper studies a model of the distribution of income under bounded needs. Utility derived from any given good reaches a bliss point at a finite consumption level of that good. On the other hand, introducing new varieties always increases utility. It is assumed that each variety is owned by a...

Menstruation can limit female labor force participation, especially in low-income countries, where menstrual hygiene practices are constrained by lack of finances and information. In a randomized controlled trial with around 1,900 female workers from four Bangladeshi garment factories, we relax...

This paper quantitatively investigates the short- and long-run effects of liberalizing global migration on the world distribution of income. We develop and parametrize a dynamic model of the world economy with endogenous migration, fertility and education decisions. We identify bilateral...

This article analyzes the effect of population sorting on economic growth. The analysis is performed in a two-region growth model with endogenous fertility, in which public knowledge spillovers from the more advanced core into children’s human capital accumulation function in the periphery are...

Economists use micro-based and macro-based approaches to assess the macroeconomic return to population health. The macro-based approach tends to yield estimates that are either negative and close to zero or positive and an order of magnitude larger than the range of estimates derived from the...

About 1.4 million refugees and irregular migrants arrived in Europe in 2015 and 2016. We model how refugees and irregular migrants are self-selected. Using unique datasets from the International Organization for Migration and Gallup World Polls, we provide the first large-scale evidence on...

This article traces inequality and numeracy development in the regions of Chile during the 19th and early 20th century. Inequality, measured with anthropometric methods, was associated with a lower speed of human capital formation. Not all talents received the necessary education to make full...