Child care and education are important inputs in the human capital production function. The research of Nobel prize winner James Heckman shows that skills are built from the early childhood on and increase the returns of later educational inputs, in short: skill begets skill. Therefore, it is...

This study was prepared by Martin Schlotter while he was working with the Ifo Institute for Economic Research. It was completed in June 2011 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Econcomics at the University of Munich in November 2011. It addresses the effects of different early...

We use data from the youth component of the British Household Panel Survey to examine how educational attitudes and aspirations among 11-15 year olds vary across the business cycle. We find that the impact of the local unemployment rate on children's attitudes and aspirations varies...