The canonical supply{demand model of the wage returns to skill has been extremely in uential; however, it has faced several important challenges. Several studies show that the standard approach sometimes produces theoretically wrong-signed elasticities of substitution, yields counterintuitive...

The labor market attachment of females has increased dramatically over the last half century, converging to a pattern similar to that of males. Human capital theory predicts an associated increase in human capital investment by females and a convergence in the life-cycle human capital investment...

In the last three decades, Canada and the US showed different paths in per capita GDP growth, skill premiums and inequality. Both firm and worker productivity differences play a role and have different policy implications, but are difficult to distinguish. To examine separate firm and worker...

The evolution of human capital over the life-cycle, especially during the accumulation phase, has been extensively studied within an optimal human capital investment framework. Given the ageing of the workforce, there is increasing interest in the human capital of older workers. The most recent...

A large literature studies the wage consequences of over-education in the sense of a worker, by some measure, having a higher level of education than is required for the job. We use unique new data to reexamine the common interpretation that initial over-education represents a harmful type of...