Firms hiring fresh graduates face uncertainty on the future productivity of workers. Theory suggests that starting … wages reflect this, with lower pay for greater uncertainty. We use the dispersion of exam grades within a field of education … as an indicator of the unobserved heterogeneity that employers face. We find solid evidence that starting wages are lower …

The risk of investment in schooling has largely been ignored. We assess thevariance in the rate of return by surveying … skewed. Our best guess of ex ante risk in university education is a coefficient ofvariation of about 0.3, comparable to that …

We study the optimal taxation of risk-free and excess capital income with heterogeneous rates of return, alongside an … optimal nonlinear earnings tax. Households can hold three assets: one risk-free, one risky but diversifiable, and one a … private investment with idiosyncratic risk whose expected return differs among households. Contrary to expectations, the …

We investigate the major choice of college graduates where we make choice dependent on expected initial wages and … expected real wage growth and expected initial wages across majors. Furthermore, the differences in these expectations appear …

This paper studies the mechanisms and the extent to which parental wage risk passes through to children's skill … not work at all, time spent with children, and child-related expenditures, we find that income risk impacts skill … childhood is hard-as available evidence suggests-uninsurable income risk can negatively impact the labor market prospects of …