This study of the emergence of inequality during the early years is based upon a comparative analysis of children at the age of about five years in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. We study a series of child outcomes related to readiness to learn, focusing on...

"There are various reasons why less-educated men have higher risks of labor market vulnerability - risks such as being unemployed or, if employed, having only low socioeconomic status. The commonly used argument is that these higher risks result from increased job competition caused by an...

We study the evolution of educational attainment of the 1932-1972 cohorts using a human capital investment model with heterogeneous learning ability. Inter-cohort variation in schooling is driven by changes in skill prices, tuition, and education quality over time, and average learning ability...

Education is a major source of inequality of opportunity, since it has long-lasting effects in various areas such as the labor market. By consequence, public policies aiming at reducing inequality of opportunity in education are likely to have broader effects on the dynamics of inequality in...

Across the United States, there is a dearth of women, underrepresented racial minority (URM), and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, and many other terms (LGBTQIA+) community members in STEM-oriented academic majors and careers. While prior research has tended to...

Motivated by the canonical (random) on-the-job search model, I measure a person’s ability to sort into preferred jobs by the risk ratio of job-to-job transitions to transitions into unemployment. I show that this measure possesses various desirable features. Making use of the Survey of Income...

We examine the channels through which a randomized early childhood intervention in Colombia led to significant gains in cognitive and socio-emotional skills among a sample of disadvantaged children. We estimate production functions for cognitive and socio-emotional skills as a function of...

This paper examines how skills are shaped by social interactions in families. We show that older siblings causally affect younger sibling's education choices and early career earnings. We focus on critical course choices in high school and overcome the identification challenges of estimating...