We study the returns to experience in teaching, estimated using supervisor ratings from classroom observations. We describe the assumptions required to interpret changes in observation ratings over time as the causal effect of experience on performance. We compare two difference-in-differences...

The quality of the early environment children experience influences their human capital development. We investigate retention and compensation in the Early Care and Education workforce by merging datasets from three different government agencies in Texas. We employ non-structural methods to...

We provide new evidence that cash transfers following the birth of a first child can have large and long-lasting effects on that child's outcomes. We take advantage of the January 1 birthdate cutoff for U.S. child-related tax benefits, which results in families of otherwise similar children...

This paper synthesizes the economics literature on skills and human capital, with a particular focus on higher-order capacities like social and decision-making skills. We review the empirical evidence on returns to human capital from both a micro and macro perspective, as well as the evidence on...

Recent research suggests that much of the cross-firm variation in measured productivity is due to differences in use of advanced management practices. Many of these practices - including monitoring, goal setting, and the use of incentives - are mediated through employee decision-making and...

We examine a natural experiment in Brazil in which similar students took the same standardized test as either a low-stakes school accountability exam or a high-stakes admission exam for the country's top universities. Using administrative data and a difference-in-differences design, we find that...

This paper synthesizes what economists have learned about human capital since Becker (1962) into four stylized facts. First, human capital explains at least one-third of the variation in labor earnings within countries and at least half of the variation across countries. Second, human capital...

In the three decades before the pandemic, mean achievement of U.S. 8th graders in math rose by more than half a standard deviation on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Between 2019 and 2022, U.S. students had forfeited 40 percent of that rise. To anticipate the consequences...

This paper aims to identify the sources of human capital growth for the observation period 1990-2020 by region, gender and various determinants. It is a preliminary version of a forthcoming Inclusive Wealth Report 2023 (UNESCO and Urban Institute of Kyushu University) report. It focuses on five...

Decisions to invest in human capital depend on people's time preferences. We show that differences in patience are closely related to substantial subnational differences in educational achievement, leading to new perspectives on longstanding within-country disparities. We use social-media data -...