Ceding ownership to outside investors provides a control dilemma for founders. In less developed capital markets with weaker formal institutions, we argue that retained founder director ownership can lower the transaction costs of external capital. Our argument rests on incomplete contracting...

Youth unemployment in Ghana increases in parental wealth. This occurs because, without unemployment insurance, only workers with sufficiently high parental wealth can afford to remain unemployed, and do so to search for scarce, high-productivity jobs. I estimate a structural model of endogenous...

We analyze workers' risk preferences and training investments. Our conceptual framework differentiates between the investment risk and insurance mechanisms underpinning training decisions. Investment risk leads risk-averse workers to train less; they undertake more training if it insures them...

We analyze workers’ risk preferences and training investments. Our conceptual framework differentiates between the investment risk and insurance mechanisms underpinning training decisions. Investment risk leads risk-averse workers to train less; they undertake more training if it insures them...

Remittances from overseas can encourage human capital investment and improve educational outcomes in developing countries. Empirical studies, however, have shown mixed evidence at best. This paper uses a 5-year panel dataset that tracks the same 3,000 households and 8,000 individuals through...

This paper focuses on foreign language learning as human capital investment or consumption. We apply the human capital investment framework to foreign language learning and enlarge it by adding consumption motives. Based on a novel dataset collected from language course participants in 14...