We combine two empirical observations in a general equilibrium occupational choice model. The first is that entrepreneurs have more control than employees over the employment of and accruals from assets, such as human capital. The second observation is that entrepreneurs enjoy higher returns to...

The paper considers the "trade and wages" debate, and proposes two alternative explanations to explain the rising wage differential (relative wage of the skilled vs. the unskilled), other than the conventional Stolper-Samuelson explanation. The first is an explanation dubbed "kaleidoscopic...

This paper sets up a heterogeneous firms model, where production consists of a continuum of tasks that differ in complexity. Firms hire low-skilled and high-skilled workers to perform these tasks. How firms assign workers to tasks depends on factor prices for the two skill types and the...

This paper surveys the recent literature on the causal relationship between education and earnings. I focus on four areas of work: theoretical and econometric advances in modelling the causal effect of education in the presence of heterogeneous returns to schooling; recent studies that use...

Globalization might affect the mix of jobs available in an economy and the rate at which workers gain skills. We develop a model in which firms differ in terms of productivity and skills and use the model to examine how globalization affects the wage distribution and the career path of workers...

We analyze self-selection and sorting of emigrants from Finland, using full-population administrative data from Statistics Finland. We analyze emigration events lasting at least five years and decompose migrant self-selection into education, occupation, and unobserved abilities. Our analysis...