School choice programs, such as vouchers or charter schools, offer parents an alternative to traditional public schools, while removing students from traditional public schools. If there are returns to scale in education, a major exodus of students from public schools could increase the average...

In this paper, we examine the general equilibrium implications of human capital accumulation in the presence of superstar markets, in which small differences in skill translate into huge differences in earnings. Previous research has concentrated on the microeconomic wage implications of...

The purpose of the paper is to study the effects of labor market policies on the equilibrium rate of growth in the Grossman-Helpman model. For that purpose, the version of the their model developed by Klette and Kortum to explain the distribution of firm size is extended to allow for both...

We develop a lifecycle human capital investment model in an overlapping generations environment. Investments in human capital can be made at different ages and are subject to different constraints on the individual and family. We explore empirical evidence on the complementarity of investments...

Every month thousands of people become employed or unemployed. In the same month thousands of people decide to enter or exit the labor force. Although most of the literature focuses primarily on job flows, several recent empirical and theoretical studies suggest that, in order to completely...

We develop a quantitative theory of gender differences in labor market participation, hours worked, labor turnover, and human capital accumulation. In our theory, young females expect to face higher labor turnover and to work less hours than males because they allocate time to child rearing. As...

The Swedish adult education program known as the Knowledge Lift (kunskapslyftet) is unprecedented in size and scope. This paper evaluates the effects of program participation on individual labor market outcomes, in particular, employment and annual income, as well as on labor market equilibrium....

In many economic contexts, especially signaling and search models, agents care about the distribution of other agents around them. Because of this, firms arise which produce neither goods nor services, but local “ponds†of agents. Such firms derive their attractiveness through the...

Competitive public and private institutions of higher education in the U.S. take race into consideration in admissions and decisions about financial aid when able to do so. In public universities in states that have proscribed use of race, substitute policies, intended to promote minority...

In most democracies, the majority of education expenditures is financed by the government. In non-democracies, we observe a wide variation in the mix of public and private funding of education. In addition, countries with high inequality tend to rely more heavily on private schooling. We develop...