Cognitive and non-cognitive skills are important determinants of labor market outcomes, but are often unobserved. We propose a proxy for these skills derived from item non-response information and a procedure to test its validity. Exploiting a unique data-collection feature of an Australian...

Estimates of the graduate earnings premium typically do not allow for the effect of non-cognitive skills. Since such skills are unobservable in most datasets there is a concern that existing estimates of the graduate premium are contaminated by selection on such unobservables. We use data on a...

This study investigates the degree to which the association of height and earnings in Pakistan is independent of other cognitive and socioemotional skills. While taller workers are regularly observed to earn more, they commonly have higher cognitive ability. Thus, there is debate concerning the...

Evidence from developed country data suggests that cognitive and non-cognitive skills contribute to improved labor market outcomes. This paper tests this hypothesis in a developing country by using an individual-level data set from Peru that incorporates modules to measure cognitive and...

Success in life increasingly depends on key skills that allow people to thrive in education, the labor market, and their interactions with others. In this paper, we emphasize creativity as a key skill that is essential to open-ended problem solving and resistant to automation. We use rich...

This article investigates the extent to which personality traits and cognitive skills can be seen as potential determinants of overeducation, and can explain the overeducation wage penalty. Using a representative survey of the Polish working-age population with well-established measures of...

While most empirical studies document that cognitive and social skills are strong predictors of individual earnings, their impact is not homogenous in space. We argue that dense urban settings utilize cognitive and social skills more intensively than rural areas, therefore the labour market...