Is skill dispersion a source of comparative advantage? While it is established that a country's aggregate endowment of human capital is an important determinant of comparative advantage, this paper investigates whether the distribution of skills in the labor force can play a role in the...

We characterize the distribution of permanent-income and quantify the value of assets and human capital in lifetime wealth portfolios. We estimate the distribution of human wealth using nonparametric identification results that allow for state-dependent stochastic discounting and unobserved...

We develop and estimate an equilibrium model of geographic variation in the intergenerational elasticity of earnings (IGE). The theory extends the Becker-Tomes model, introducing a production sector in which workers' human capital inputs are complements. In this setting the return to parental...

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...