We produce estimates of the pecuniary costs of inadequate investment in human capital for countries, macro regions and the world at large. These costs are borne by individuals (private costs), the government (fiscal costs), and society, which includes both individuals and the government (social...

In this paper we estimate the effect of education on lifetime earnings in Europe, by distinguishing between individuals who lived in rural or urban areas during childhood and between individuals who had access to many or few books at age ten. We instrument years of education using reforms of...

This paper reviews the empirical economic literature on the relative importance of non cognitive skills for school and labour market outcomes, with a focus on Europe. There is evidence that high cognitive test scores are likely to result not only from high cognitive skills but also from high...

This paper investigates the relationship between education and training provided by the firm, both on the job and off the job, using a unique dataset based on a survey of Thai employees conducted in the summer of 2001. We find a significant and negative relationship between educational...

This paper reviews the existing evidence on workplace training in Europe in different data sources--the CVTS, OECD data and the European Community Household Panel. We outline the differences in training incidence and relate these differences to the private costs and benefits of training, and to...

Due to pension reforms, minimum retirement age increased substantially in Italy between the second part of the 1990s and the early 2000s. We compare the training participation of pre- and post-reform cohorts of private sector employees and estimate that adding one year to minimum retirement age...

This report looks at employer-provided training in Europe. We start with a brief outline of the economic theory of training. We then look at the recent facts, by combining data from two employer surveys, the European Investment Bank's Investment Survey (EIBIS) and Eurostat's Continuous...

Using a representative sample of European firms, we study whether and to what extent financing constraints affect employers' decision to invest in employee training. We combine survey data on investment activities with administrative data on financial statements to develop an index of financing...

Using firm-level data covering the 27 EU countries, the UK and the US, we show that employers tend to reduce investment in training per employee after adopting advanced digital technologies (ADT). We estimate with a control function approach firm-level production functions augmented with two...

We model individual careers in sports and games from initial entry to eventual exit or success as a discrete-choice, finite-horizon optimization problem. We apply this model to the international game of chess and study cross-country differences in the relative success of players. While we find...