The labor market "quality" of immigrants is a subject of debate among immigration researchers, and a major public policy concern. However, traditional methods of measuring human capital are particularly difficult to apply to recently arrived immigrants. Many factors that have a negative effect...

In this paper we analyze investments in human capital assets in a way which is standard for financial assets, but not (yet) for human capital assets. We study mean-variance plots of human capital assets. We compare the properties of human capital returns using a performance measure and by using...

Are ethnic specialization and thus a downward sloping labor demand curve fundamental features of labor market competition between ethnic groups? In a general equilibrium model, this paper argues that spillover effects in skill acquisition and social distances between ethnic groups engender...

This paper provides a novel microeconomic foundation for pecuniary human capital externalities in a labor market model of monopsonistic competition. Multiple equilibria arise because of a strategic complementarity in investment decisions.

This paper considers alternative policies for promoting skill formation that are targeted to different stages of the life cycle. We demonstrate the importance of both cognitive and noncognitive skills that are formed early in the life cycle in accounting for racial, ethnic and family background...

One problem with the theory of firm-specific human capital is that it is difficult to generate convincing examples of investment that could generate the sometimes observed large and continuing effects on earnings. Another approach, called the ?skill-weights? view, allows all skills to be general...

We study the self-employed decision and its relation to human and social capital. Human capital is necessary to acquire skills. Social capital dampens the effects of uncertainty about future income. Our data set consists of 1339 respondents from the same age group, who were interviewed three...

This paper analyzes how the implicit difference in time horizons between refugees and economic immigrants affects subsequent human capital investments and wage assimilation. The analysis uses the 1980/1990 Integrated Public Use Samples of the Census to study labor market outcomes of immigrants...