Numerous studies regress log earnings on schooling and report estimated coefficients as "Mincer rates of return". A more recent literature uses instrumental variables. This chapter considers the economic interpretation of these analyses and how the availability of repeated cross section and...

This paper presents economic models of child development that capture the essence of recent findings from the empirical literature on skill formation. The goal of this essay is to provide a theoretical framework for interpreting the evidence from a vast empirical literature, for guiding the next...