Rising costs of and returns to college have led to sizeable increases in the demand for student loans in many countries. In the USA, student loan default rates have also risen for recent cohorts as labor market uncertainty and debt levels have increased. We discuss these trends as well as recent...

This paper analyzes a multi-task agency framework where the agent exhibits task-specific abilities. It illustrates how incentive contracts account for the agent's task-specific abilities if contractible performance measures do not reflect the agent's multidimensional contribution to firm value....

I analyze a model of human capital development in the presence of peer effects. Parents invest in their child, and this investment conveys a positive externality upon the child’s peers. Parents also acquire wealth, which i) finances consumption, and ii) determines a child’s peer group. I...

I study the size and sources of the monetary return to college achievement as measured by cumulative Grade Point Average (GPA). I first present evidence that the return to achievement is large and statistically significant. I find, however, that this masks variation in the return across...

An increasingly important organisational design problem for many firms is to recoup general human capital rents while maintaining attractive career prospects for workers. We explore the role of information management in this context. In our model, an information management policy determines the...

The allocation of talent in a society is an important determinant of productivity and growth. I study the informational role of education on the allocation of talent in a two-sector model where education provides workers information about their abilities. When workers and firms are equally...

I study the consequences of heterogeneity of skills for the design of an optimal unemployment insurance, using a principal-agent set-up with a risk neutral insurer and infinitely lived risk averse agents. Agents, who are characterised by different productivities or skills, are employed by firms...

This article calculates the sheepskin effect on wages in Cali’s labor market, where additional profitability on wages when possessing a high school degree is 25 percent and 12 percent for March and September of 2000, and 45 percent and 37 percent for the same months, respectively, when...

This work analyzes the ability signaling hypothesis using a rich set of data of a homogeneous population -Business and Economics graduates of University X- who share similar occupations in the labor market. After studying three years of a common core curriculum, students must choose between...