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...

In this paper we ask whether policies targeting a reduction in crime rates through changes in education outcomes can be considered an effective and cost-viable alternative to interventions based on harsher punishment alone. In particular we study the effect of subsidizing high school completion....

Microdata information about firms' input choices and effective tax liabilities is used to quantify the extent of resource misallocation and efficiency losses due to large tax distortions and limited access to credit. We develop an equilibrium model of firms' behavior in which the tax and credit...

This paper critically appraises the approaches that have characterized the literature on the macroeconomic effects of job reallocations. Since Lilien's (1982) seminal contribution there has been a flourishing of empirical analysis but no unifying theoretical framework has obtained consensus in...

This paper appraises the literature on the macroeconomic effects of job reallocations. We overview different methodological approaches to the problem of observational equivalence of aggregate and sectoral shocks and draw two main conclusions. First, the non-directional nature of reallocation...

We estimate the costs of occupational mobility using a novel approach that relies on aggregate flows of workers across occupations rather than on wage data. The theoretical underpinnings for this approach are derived from a model of occupation choice that delivers a gravity equation linking...

This paper investigates a theoretical mechanism linking comparative advantage to the distribution of skills in the working population. We develop a tractable multi-country, multi-industry model of trade with unobservable skills in the labour market and show that comparative advantage derives...

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,...

(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...