Children claim a large part of the parents` potential resources, particularly their time. Direct time costs arise through the time spent out of the labour force while the children are small, indirect costs are the result of lower investment into human capital. It is demonstrated in this paper...

Economic growth depends on human resources and human needs. The demographic age structure shapes both of these factors. We study five-year data from the OECD countries 1950-1990 in the framework of an age structure augmented neoclassical growth model with gradual technical adjustment. The model...

This paper attempts to explain individual variation in wages by estimating different wage equations. The study has two goals: first, to analyze the effect of years of schooling on the wages of vocational training graduates using a more precise measure for schooling than that commonly used in...

In this paper we try to analyze the role of fiscal policy in fostering a higher participation of the different production factors in the human capital production sector in the long-run. Introducing a tax on physical capital and differentiating both a tax on raw labor wage and a tax on skills or...

Dropping out of school has recently become an issue of major policy concern in Italy. A series of reforms of secondary school objectives, programmes and organizational design have been proposed to adapt the public school system to evolutions in the labour market and to increase overall...

This paper summarises the changing nature of qualifications across the working age population in New Zealand over the period from 1986 to 2001, and investigates the relationships between the changing qualification distribution and employment and income. First, the results confirm that there was...

This paper reviews the literature on institutions and explores the ways in which institutions can influence economic growth, with a particular focus on how institutions affect the use that firms make of human capital to improve their productivity. It discusses the influence of underlying...

The way that skills contribute to productivity improvements in firms is still something of a "black box". There is general agreement that human capital (broadly defined) is important for growth. Less is known about the ways in which skills and knowledge contribute to a firm’s pursuit of...

This monograph, which has been prepared as a Research Report to the New Zealand (New Zealand) Treasury, undertakes three main tasks: (1) describing the various forms of tangible and intangible human capital, their relationship to "capabilities" affecting human well-being, and the channels...

This paper considers the optimal contract when the current (hidden) action of an agent has a persistent effect on the future outcome. The optimal contract in a two-effort choice, two-period setting is characterized analytically and numerically. In particular, we show that persistence tends to...