The closing of the gender wage gap is an ongoing phenomenon in industrialized countries. However, research has been limited in its ability to understand the causes of these changes, due in part to an inability to directly compare the work of women to that of men. In this study, we use a new...

The increased diffusion of computers is one of the fundamental changes at workplaces in recent decades. While the majority of workers now spend a substantial fraction of their working day with a computer, research on the wage effect of computer use effectively came to a halt after DiNardo and...

We analyze how an entry regulation that imposes a mandatory educational standard affects entry into self-employment and occupational mobility. We exploit the German reunification as a natural experiment and identify regulatory effects by comparing differences between regulated occupations and...

Does interacting product and labor market regulation alter the impact of immigration on wages of competing native workers? Focusing on the large, sudden and unanticipated wave of migration from East to West Germany after German reunification and allowing for endogenous immigration, we compare...

Schools often track students to classes based on ability. Proponents of tracking argue it is a low-cost tool to improve learning since instruction is more effective when students are more homogeneous, while opponents argue it exacerbates initial differences in opportunities without strong...

Growing reliance on student loans and repayment difficulties have raised concerns of a student debt crisis in the United States, but little is known about the effects of student borrowing on human capital and long-run financial well-being. We use variation induced by recent expansions in federal...

Parents with higher education levels have children with higher education levels. However, is this because parental education actually changes the outcomes of children, suggesting an important spillover of education policies, or is it merely that more able individuals who have higher education...

Among the perceived inputs in the ?production? of child quality is family size; there is an extensive theoretical literature that postulates a tradeoff between child quantity and quality within a family. However, there is little causal evidence that speaks to this theory. Our analysis is able to...

Research suggests that teenage childbearing adversely affects both the outcomes of the mothers as well as those of their children. We know that low-educated women are more likely to have a teenage birth, but does this imply that policies that increase educational attainment reduce early...

A growing body of literature over the past decade suggests that a firm?s organizational structure/capital can contribute in significant ways to the productive capacity of a firm. But, as with other intangible assets, there is no consensus definition of what this organizational capital is, how to...