Individuals often select which university they will attend based on the institution's reputation. They do so to signal to employers their abilities, which may affect their hireability and wages. We study these signaling effects by exploiting a change in Ecuador's governmental university ranking...

This paper investigates the role of education in the job search process of the young unemployed workers. Exploiting the variation in education induced by a reform that caused a dramatic increase in the exposed cohorts' educational attainment, and using data obtained from administrative...

A key parameter in structural models is the Frisch elasticity of labor supply at the extensive margin, but empirical estimates vary greatly. We provide a quantitative synthesis of the literature. To this end, we collect 723 estimates from 36 studies along with 22 explanatory variables reflecting...

Labor markets in the UK have been characterized by markedly widening wage inequality for lowskill (non-college) women, a trend that predates the pandemic. We examine the contribution of job polarization to this trend by estimating age, period, and cohort effects for the likelihood of employment...

Is ownership change an opportunity for new owners to make systematic changes in the workforce of the acquired plant? We document changes to the workforce along observable and unobservable dimensions of worker quality around ownership change using matched employeremployee data. We observe above...

Making use of an international survey that directly assesses the participants' cognitive skills, I study the effect of skills on employment in 32 countries. On average, a one-standard-deviation increase in numeracy skills is associated with an 8.4 percentage-point increase in the probability of...

International differences in teacher quality are commonly hypothesized to be a key determinant of the large international student performance gaps, but lack of consistent quality measures has precluded testing this. Using unique assessment data, we construct country-level measures of teacher...

The functional income distribution in the US and most OECD countries has been characterized by an increasing capital income share and a declining wage share over the last decades. We present new evidence for the US economy that this fact is not only explained by technical change and...

Foreign investors are expected to contribute to economic development through a variety of channels. However, many foreign investment operations are small, and almost insignificant in their impact on the local environment. An important indication of the potential contribution of foreign investors...