Working memory capacity is a key component of executive functioning and is thought to play an important role for a wide range of cognitive and noncognitive skills such as fluid intelligence, math, reading, the inhibition of pre-potent impulses or more general self-regulation abilities. Because...

Working memory capacity is thought to play an important role for a wide range of cognitive and noncognitive skills such as fluid intelligence, math, reading, the inhibition of pre-potent impulses or more general self-regulation abilities. Because these abilities substantially affect individuals'...

This paper tests the extent to which the accumulation of basic cognitive skills, as measured by a post-schooling math test, matter for young dropouts entering today’s labor market. Based on a sample of dropouts who were age 16-18 when administered a math test in the late 1990s, estimates...

Little is known about the response behavior of parents whose children are exposed to an early-life shock. In this paper we interpret the prenatal exposure of the Austrian 1986 cohort to radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident as a negative human capital shock and examine their parents'...

Little is known about the response behavior of parents whose children are exposed to an early-life shock. We interpret the prenatal exposure of the Austrian 1986 cohort to radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident as a negative human capital shock and examine their parents' response...

This paper examines the distributional impacts of direct college costs - that is, whether the response of educational decisions to college costs varies by student characteristics. The primary obstacle in estimating these effects is the endogeneity of schooling costs. To overcome this issue, I...

We study how the duration of paid parental leave affects the accumulation of cognitive skills among children. We use a reform which extended parental leave benefits from 12 to 15 months for Swedish children born after August 1988 to evaluate the effects of prolonged parental leave on children's...

SBTC is a powerful mechanism in explaining the increasing gap between educated and uneducated wages. However, SBTC cannot mimic the US within-group wage inequality. This paper provides an explanation for the observed intra-college group inequality by showing that the top decile earners'...

We show that officer training during the Swedish military service has a strong positive effect on the probability to attain a managerial position later in life. The most intense type of officer training increases the probability of becoming a civilian manager by about 5 percentage points, or 75...

What are the long-term effects of universal preschool programs on child outcomes? We review 26 studies using natural experiments to estimate the effects of universal preschool programs for children aged 0-6 years on child outcomes measured from third grade to adulthood. Studies comparing...