This paper examines the relationship between individuals' skills and labor market outcomes for the working-age population of Colombia's urban areas. Using a 2012 unique household survey, the paper finds that cognitive skills (aptitudes to perform mental tasks such as comprehension or reasoning)...

We study the causal impact of network centrality on educational outcomes using field experiments in primary schools in Bangladesh. After obtaining information on friendship networks, we randomly allocate students into groups and give them individual and group assignments. We find that groups...

During the last decade knowledge about human behavior from psychology and sociology has enhanced the field of economics of education. By now research recognizes cognitive skills (as measured by achievement tests) and soft skills (personality traits not adequately measured by achievement tests)...

This paper tests the theory recently put forward by Edward Lazear that individuals with competence in many skills should have a higher probability of being self-employed than others. The empirical results for Germany support this jack-of-all-trades view.

The prevalence and stability of marriage has declined in the United States as the economic lives of men and women have converged. Family change has not been uniform, however, and the widening gaps in marital status, relationship stability, and childbearing between socioeconomic groups raise...

This paper provides both a theoretical and an empirical investigation into the impact of job skill types on the black/white pay differentials. The theoretical analysis derives that the more intensively "soft"/"hard" skills are used in an occupation, the greater/smaller the black/white pay...

The long-term unemployed sometimes lack basic soft skills needed to enter and succeed in the labor market. We examine whether it is possible to develop or enhance these skills among adults by using a large-scale randomized control trial (RCT) to evaluate the effectiveness of an Active Labor...

This study explores sex differences in language and socio-emotional skills on children 7 months to 6 years old in Latin-America. Females had a significant advantage in both dimensions. To our knowledge, this is the first study to document sex differences in these dimensions at a very young age....

A randomized control trial with 945 entrepreneurs in Jamaica shows positive shortterm impacts of soft-skills training on business outcomes. The effects are concentrated among men, and disappear twelve months after the training. We argue that the main channel is increased adoption of recommended...

From 2020 Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education will be compulsory in UK schools for adolescents, however less is known about how it can be taught in a an effective manner. We examine, through a randomised trial, the impact of an evidenced based health related quality of life (HRQoL)...