This paper demonstrates that insiders can erect barriers to entry and skim rents by sinking costs in human capital when labour markets are otherwise perfectly contestable. The sunk costs nature of human capital investments may result from the need to satisfy ever increasing specialised skill...

Human capital contracts give private investors the right to share of students' future earnings in return for a financial contribution during their studies. Although still rarely used, human capital contracts could not only help to completement limited public funding for higher education but...

Countries with high income inequality also show a strong association between parents ́and childrenś economic well-being; i.e. low intergenerational mobility. This study is the first to test this relationship in a between and within country setup, using harmonized micro data from 18 Latin...

Countries with high income inequality also show a strong association between parents' and children’s economic well-being; i.e. low intergenerational mobility. This study is the first to test this relationship in a between-country and within-country setup; using harmonized micro data from 18...

We estimate intergenerational mobility of education for people born 1940-1999 at the subnational level for 40 European countries. The result is a panel of mobility indices for 105 mesoregions (NUTS1), and 215 microregions (NUTS2). We use these indices to make three contributions. First, we...

We exploit a novel survey of recently arrived asylum seekers in Germany in order to estimate the degree of intergenerational mobility in education among refugees and compare it to the educational mobility of similar-aged individuals in their region of origin. The findings show that the refugees...

This study analyses the selection of recently arrived asylum seekers from Middle Eastern and African countries in Germany. The findings suggest that, on average, asylum seekers have 22 percent more years of schooling - the indicator used for human capital - when compared to same-aged persons...

In this paper we present a life-cycle model with human capital investment during working life through training and provide a novel empirical test of human capital theory. Using a sizable pension reform which shifts the retirement age between two adjacent cohorts by three years, we document...

We study the long-run implications of regional and ethnic favoritism in Africa. Combining geocoded individual-level survey data from the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) with data on national leaders’ birthplaces across 41 African countries, we explore the educational attainment of adults...

Despite the interdependence between cognitive and noncognitive skills, empirical studies have shown a longer period of acquisition in life-time for the latter besides relevance for educational and labor market success. Analyzing returns of investments during different periods of life is...