Climate change severely impacts critical facets of human capital across the life cycle. This is particularly alarming as both the frequency and intensity of extreme weather shocks continue to increase, and extremes appear to be the main channel of causality. At the same time, human capital has a...

We study the importance of the extended family – the dynasty – for the persistence in inequality across generations. We use data including the entire Swedish population, linking four generations. This data structure enables us to identify parents’ siblings and cousins, their spouses, and...

Katz and Rapoport (2005) conclude that with linear production technology and the possibility of unilateral migration, region-specific shocks may increase the average level of education. Previously, Poutvaara (2000) derived a corresponding result with Cobb-Douglas technology and migration which...

In an overlapping generations model with two social classes, rich and poor, parents of the different social classes vote on two issues: redistributive policies for them and education investments for their kids. Public education is the engine for growth through its effect on human capital; but it...

An emerging literature on the geography of bohemians argues that a region's lifestyle and cultural amenities explain, at least partly, the unequal distribution of highly qualified people across space, which in turn, explains geographic disparities in economic growth. However, to date, there has...

An emerging economic literature over the past decade has made use of international tests of educational achievement to analyze the determinants and impacts of cognitive skills. The cross-country comparative approach provides a number of unique advantages over national studies: It can exploit...

In this note, we show that labour market integration can be a double-edged sword. In the presence of local human capital externalities, integration and the ensuing agglomeration of skilled labour can cause a decline in human capital and the total wage sum (net of education costs). In particular,...

In this paper we investigate how fertility decisions respond to unexpected career interruptions which occur as a consequence of job displacement. Using an event study approach we compare the birth rates of displaced women with those of women unaffected by job loss after establishing the...

We investigate externalities in higher education enrollment over the course of development in a two-sector model. Each sector works with only one type of labor, skilled or unskilled, and individuals are differentiated according to their cost of acquiring human capital. Both sectors exhibit...

We study the effects of a voluntary skill certification scheme in an online freelancing labour market. We show that obtaining skill certificates increases freelancers' earnings. This effect is not driven by increased freelancer productivity but by decreased employer uncertainty. The increase in...