Utilizing pre-intervention variation in the mortality from various infectious diseases, along with the time variation occurring from medical breakthroughs in the late 1940s and the 1950s, this paper tests how a large positive shock to life expectancy influenced inequalities in human capital...

We present a theory of human capital, with its two most essential components, health capital and, what we term, skill capital, endogenously determined within the model. Using the theory, and a calibrated version of it, we uncover and highlight an important economic mechanism driving...

For a large set of countries, we document how the labor earnings inequality varies with GDP per capita. As countries get richer, the mean-to-median ratio and the Gini coefficient decline. Yet, this decline masks divergent patterns: while inequality at the top of the earnings distribution falls,...

We study the aggregate productivity effects of firm-level financial frictions. Credit constraints affect not only production decisions but also household-level schooling decisions. In turn, entrepreneurial schooling decisions impact firm-level productivities, whose cross-sectional distribution...

We present an OLG model in which life expectancy and environmental quality dynamics are jointly determined. Agents may invest in environmental care, depending on how much they expect to live. In turn, environmental conditions affect life expectancy. As a result, our model produces a positive...

This paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of the role of life expectancy for optimal schooling and lifetime labor supply. The results of a simple prototype Ben-Porath model with age-specific survival rates show that an increase in lifetime labor supply is not a necessary, nor a...

This paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of the role of life expectancy for optimal schooling and lifetime labor supply. The results of a simple prototype Ben-Porath model with age-specific survival rates show that an increase in lifetime labor supply is not a necessary, nor a...

We present an OLG model in which life expectancy and environmental quality dynamics are jointly determined. Agents may invest in environmental care, depending on how much they expect to live. In turn, environmental conditions affect life expectancy. As a result, our model produces a positive...

We develop a simple overlapping generations model to analytically show that population aging leads to increased educational efforts through a general equilibrium effect. The key mechanism at work in the model is that scarcity of raw labor increases the rate of return to human capital relative to...