Is ability drain (AD) economically significant? That immigrants or their children founded over 40% of the Fortune 500 US companies suggests it is. Moreover, brain drain (BD) induces a brain gain (BG). This cannot occur with ability. Nonetheless, while BD has been studied extensively, AD drain...

We examine the association between brain types and wages using the UK Behavioural Study dataset for the period 2011 to 2013 (four waves). By applying Empathising-Systemising Theory (E-S), the estimations suggest that, for men and women, systemising traits are associated with higher wage returns...

Firms may be reluctant to provide general training if workers can quit and use their gained skills elsewhere. "Training contracts" that impose a penalty for premature quitting can help alleviate this inefficiency. Using plausibly exogenous contractual variation from a leading trucking firm, we...

Over the last decade, the economic literature has increasingly focused on the importance of gender identity and sticky gender norms in an attempt to explain the persistence of the gender gaps. Using detailed register data on the latest cohorts of Danish labour market entrants, this paper...

I study whether human capital investments are based on local rather than national demand, and whether this is explained by migration or information frictions. I analyze three sector-specific shocks with differential local effects, including the dot-com crash, the 2008 financial crisis, and a...

We conducted a randomized evaluation of two labor market interventions targeted to young women aged 18 to 19 in three of Nairobi's poorest neighborhoods. One treatment offered participants a bundled intervention designed to simultaneously relieve credit and human capital constraints; a second...

Programs that increase the economic capacity of poor women can have cascading effects on children's participation in school and work that are theoretically undetermined. We present a simple model to describe the possible channels through which these programs may affect children's activities....

This paper examines how stringent de facto firing regulations affect firm size throughout the developing world. We exploit a large firm level dataset across 63 countries and within country variation in the enforcement of the labor codes in countries with very different de jure firing...

We characterize optimal redistribution in a dynastic family model with human capital. We show how a government can improve the trade-off between equality and incentives by changing the amount of observable human capital. We provide an intuitive decomposition for the wedge between human-capital...