Participation in the stock market is limited, especially early in life. By contrast, human capital investment is widespread, especially early in life. Returns to equity are constant across households, while returns to human capital vary. The contribution of this paper is to demonstrate that once...

Households face earnings risk which is non-normal and varies by age and over the income distribution. We show that allowing for these rich features of earnings dynamics, in the context of a structurally estimated life-cycle portfolio choice model, helps to rationalize the limited participation...

Human capital contracts give private investors the right to share of students' future earnings in return for a financial contribution during their studies. Although still rarely used, human capital contracts could not only help to completement limited public funding for higher education but...

This paper assesses the trade-off between acquiring specialized skills targeted for a particular occupation and acquiring a package of skills that diversifies risk across occupations. Individual-level data on college credits across subjects and labor-market dynamics reveal that diversification...

This paper assesses the trade-off between acquiring specialized skills targeted for a particular occupation and acquiring a package of skills that diversifies risk across occupations. Individual-level data on college credits across subjects and labor-market dynamics reveal that diversification...

This article proposes a practical method to accomplish a previously elusive task: measuring human capital with monetary values on the statement of financial position, such as the balance sheet.Human capital is shown to comply with the definition of a right-of-use asset, as defined in the IASB...