The probability of dropping out of high school varies considerably with parental education. Using a rich Canadian panel data set, we examine the channels determining this socioeconomic status effect. We estimate an extended version of Carneiro, Hansen and Heckman (2003)’s factor model,...

We develop and estimate an equilibrium model of intergenerational earnings persistence based on skill complementarity in production. We show that when a worker's productivity is relatively independent of co-workers' skills (i.e., skills are substitutable) parental investments in a child's human...

(they are crowded out). Thus the subsidy strongly acts on the composition of those in education. We find that subsidies made conditional on financial resources are generally preferable to those conditional on ability and large equilibrium effects can be induced by relatively small changes in...

This paper analyzes the barriers to occupational mobility using a theoretical framework that parallels that of the gravity models commonly estimated in the trade literature. The model provides an equation linking flows of workers across occupation pairs to a set of source and destination...

We use a large, rich Canadian micro-level dataset to examine the channels through which family socio-economic status and unobservable characteristics affect children's decisions to drop out of high school. First, we document the strength of observable socio-economic factors: our data suggest...

Is skill dispersion a source of comparative advantage? While it is established that a country's aggregate endowment of human capital is an important determinant of comparative advantage, this paper investigates whether the distribution of skills in the labor force can play a role in the...

This paper studies the retirement incentives generated by the U.S. Social Security system in a framework which allows for different degrees of cooperation and strategic interaction between spouses. We examine the relative empirical performance of models specified under different assumptions...