Out-migration of college-educated youth from rural areas of the United States is a persistent trend and a salient concern for rural development practitioners. Using a unique dataset compiled from a survey of alumni graduating from a major Midwestern Land Grant University between 1982 and 2006,...

There is a large body of evidence supporting the notion that a) those who grow up to be patient(forward-looking) do better in life compared to those who do not, and b) parents can inculcatethe virtue of delayed gratification in their children by taking the right sort of actions. We studya...

We hypothesize that hog production can be characterized by complementarities between newtechnologies, worker skills and farms size. Such production processes are consistent withKremer’s (1993) O-ring production theory in which a single mistake in any one of severalcomplementary tasks in a...

Deja vu - war schon immer so - tut sich nichts - da kann man nichts machen - wir haben schon alles probiert- wie soll ich das denn ändern? Entwicklung scheint schwierig zu sein, auf der Ebene des Individuums,sozialer Systeme oder ganzer Gesellschaften. Entwicklung wird möglich, so die These in...

This paper reviews the stylized facts regarding the levels of human capital investments and the returnsto those investments in developing countries. These returns are substantial and are pervasive acrossdemographic groups. Returns are comparable between men and women and between urban and...

This paper reviews the stylized facts regarding the distribution of human capital investments and the returns to those investments in developing countries. It then examines recent evidence regarding which policies can induce increased human capital investments in the most efficient manner, using...

Legislation affects corporate governance and the return to human and financial capital. We allow the preference of a political majority to determine both the governance structure and the extent of labor rents. In a society where median voters have relatively more at stake in the form of human...

This paper extends the standard human capital model with real options. Real options influenceinvestment behavior when risky investments in human capital are irreversible and individualscan affect the timing of the investment. Option values make individuals more reluctant toinvest in human...

Do academic scientists bring valuable human capital to the companies they found or join? If so, what are the particular skills that compose their human capital and how are these skills related to firm performance? This paper examines these questions using a particular group of academic...

This study develops and estimates a model of the naturalization process in the US. The model is based on both the characteristics of immigrants and features of their countries of origin. The empirical analysis is based on the 2000 US Census...