Whether fat tails exist in the distribution of venture capital and private equity returns affects how investors view the attractiveness of such investments, especially if means or variances are potentially infinite. Using fund performance data, I propose and test a smooth double Pareto...

The paper analyzes permanent aspects of brain drain phenomenon referred to Italian highly skilled workers. The analysis regards a sample of post-doctoral graduates, medical specialists, and academic researchers. Results suggest that brain drain in Italy is not temporary, as demonstrated by...

In imperfect capital markets, an entrepreneur has to invest substantial personal funds to start a private firm and is forced to bear large firm-specific risk. Furthermore, if the entrepreneur is risk averse, one would expect the private equity to earn a premium for idiosyncratic risk. In this...

This paper estimates economic returns to physical capital and inherent ability among Indonesian fishermen using a natural experiment. By exploiting the quasi-random variation in the length of fishing boats generated by an aid program among survivors of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, it is found...

We present an intertemporal consumption model of consumer investment in financial literacy. Consumers benefit from such investment because their stock of financial literacy allows them to increase the returns on their wealth. Since literacy depreciates over time and has a cost in terms of...

Risk averse investors have to be compensated in higher expected returns when facing investments with higher risk. Education is an important investment therefore we use the results for 16 countries to test the positive relationship between return to education and the risk involved in this...

We quantify firm heterogeneity in skill returns and present direct evidence of worker–firm complementarities. Within a model of firms' demand for cognitive and noncognitive attributes we show that identification depends on the availability of skill measures. Linking administrative data to test...