We study the allocation and productivity consequences of training production line supervisors in soft skills via a randomized controlled trial. Consistent with standard practice for training investments within firms, we asked middle managers -- who sit above supervisors in the hierarchy -- to...

Using hand-collected data spanning more than a decade on European banks' sovereign debt portfolios, we show that the trust of residents of a bank's countries of operation in the residents of a potential target country of investment has a positive, statistically significant, and economically...

In 2017, "The Big Three" institutional investors launched campaigns to increase gender diversity on corporate boards. We estimate that their campaigns led American corporations to add at least 2.5 times as many female directors in 2019 as they had in 2016. Firms increased diversity by...

Machines increasingly replace people in routine job tasks. The remaining tasks require workers to make open-ended decisions and to have "soft" skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking and adaptability. This paper documents growing demand for decision-making and explores the consequences...

We use a unique corpus of job descriptions for C-suite positions to document skills requirements in top managerial occupations across a large sample of firms. A novel algorithm maps the text of each executive search into six separate skill clusters reflecting cognitive, interpersonal, and...

The foundations for successful child development are established in early childhood. Two main policy approaches for strengthening these foundations have been subsidized preschool programs and programs targeting the home environment. Our chapter reviews a large body of empirical work...

This paper asks whether improving the quality of public schools can be an effective long-run crime-prevention strategy in the U.S. Specifically, we examine the effect of school quality improvements early in children's lives on the likelihood that they are arrested as adults. We exploit...

This paper investigates the evolution of socio-emotional skills over the life cycle and across generations. We start by characterising the evolution of these skills in the first part of the life cycle. We then examine whether parents' socio-emotional skills in early childhood rather than in...

Can life skills be taught in early adolescence? Using a clustered randomized control trial, this study analyzes the impact of a school-based life skills intervention in grades six and seven within a sample of 2,459 girls in Rajasthan, India. Our evidence suggests that the intervention is...

We randomly assign applicants to over-subscribed programs to study the effects of teaching hard and soft skills in vocational training and examine their impacts on skills acquisition and labor market outcomes using both survey and administrative data. We find that providing vocational training...