This paper argues that skill formation is a life-cycle process and develops the implications of this insight for Scottish social policy. Families are major producers of skills, and a successful policy needs to promote effective families and to supplement failing ones. Targeted early...

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...

This paper uses newly available Chinese micro data to estimate the return to college education for late 20th century China when allowing for heterogeneous returns among individuals selecting into schooling based on these differences. We use recently developed semiparametric methods to identify...

This paper argues that skill formation is a life-cycle process and develops the implications of this insight for Scottish social policy. Families are major producers of skills, and a successful policy needs to promote effective families and to supplement failing ones. We present evidence that...

This paper uses factor models to identify and estimate distributions of counterfactuals. We extend LISREL frameworks to a dynamic treatment effect setting, extending matching to account for unobserved conditioning variables. Using these models, we can identify all pairwise and joint treatment...

We exploit an exogenous increase in General Educational Development (GED) testing requirements to determine whether raising the difficulty of the test causes students to finish high school rather than drop out and GED certify. We find that a six point decrease in GED pass rates induces a 1.3...

Trends in skill bias and greater turbulence in modern labor markets put wages and employment prospects of unskilled workers under pressure. Weak incentives to utilize and maintain skills over the life-cycle become manifest with the ageing of the population. Reinvention of human capital policies...

This paper estimates the rate of return to the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program, an early intervention program targeted toward disadvantaged African-American youth. Estimates of the rate of return to the Perry program are widely cited to support the claim of substantial economic benefits from...