The authors investigate how labor market institutions such as unemployment insurance, unions, firing regulations, and minimum wages have affected the evolution of wage inequality among male workers. Results of estimations using data on institutions in eleven OECD countries indicate that changes...

In this paper we study the role of parental risk aversion on children's educational choices. In a country like Italy where parental support is the main source of funds supporting college enrollment, we show that parents' risk aversion (elicited by surveys on lottery tolerance) has a significant...

Since the early 1980s the labor market in the United States has seen a substantial increase in earnings dispersion. We study the issue by developing an on-the-job search model of the US labor market that allows for wage and employment mobility as a result of optimal individual behavior. We...

In this paper we suggest a simple decomposition of the correlation coefficient of education to account for the different intergenerational mobility of subgroups of the population, which is of key importance from a policy perspective.