A PAYGO system may serve as insurance against not having children and as an enforcement device for ungrateful children who are unwilling to pay their parents a pension. In fact, the latter was Bismarck’s historic motive for introducing this system. It is true that the PAYGO system reduces the...

The Indian software industry has been widely studied. Previous studies have recognized the role of skilled labor in the growth of the industry, but have not empirically investigated the role of skilled labor. In this study we focus on the role of human capital in the regional location of the...

This paper presents empirical evidence on the impact of modern energy access and reliability of energy supply on education outcomes, specifically enrollment and test scores using two waves of India Human Development Survey. Electrification studies have generally focused only on the estimating...

This paper provides new evidence of the effects of child gender on parental labor supply and earnings in two-parent families with one child. Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey, I document a son premium on the intensive margin of both paternal and maternal labor supply. Parents...

The initial earnings of U.S. immigrants vary enormously by country of origin. Via three interrelated analyses, we show earnings convergence across source countries with time in the United States Human-capital theory plausibly explains the inverse relationship between initial earnings and...

Do parents invest more or less in their high ability children? We provide new evidence on this question by comparing observed ability differences and observed investment differences between siblings in the NLSY. To overcome endogeneity issues we use sibling differences in handedness as an...

We show that a calibrated dynamic skill accumulation model allowing for comparative advantages, can explain the weak (or negative) effects of schooling on productivity that have been recently reported (i) in the micro literature on compulsory schooling, ii) in the micro literature on estimating...

In this paper we examine the effect of birth order on human capital development in Ecuador using a large national database together with self-collected survey data. Using family fixed effects models we find significant positive birth order effects; earlier born children stay behind in their...

This paper develops a dynamic model of human capital investment and labor participation. The main focus is on the fact that women's labor force participation rate is U-shaped over the course of development. We also analyze the behavior of the relative education levels of men and women, the...