There has been a remarkable increase in wage inequality in the United States, UK, and many other countries over the past three decades. A significant part of this appears to be within observable groups (such as experience-gender-skill cells). A generally untested implication of many theories...

Using a variance decomposition framework that bounds the effect of families and neighbourhoods, we find important effects of family characteristics and residential location on adult education and earnings in Norway. Neighbourhoods are less important than families, as the correlations among...

Job reallocation is considered to be a key characteristic of well-functioning labor markets, as more productive firms grow and less productive ones contract or close. However, despite its potential benefits for the economy, there are significant costs that are borne by displaced workers. We...

Given the wide use of child care subsidies across countries, it is surprising how little we know about the effect of these subsidies on children's longer-run outcomes. Using a sharp discontinuity in the price of child care in Norway, we are able to isolate the effects of child care subsidies on...

Lower birth weight babies have worse outcomes, both short-run in terms of one-year mortality rates and longer run in terms of educational attainment and earnings. However, recent research has called into question whether birth weight itself is important or whether it simply reflects other...

There is an extensive theoretical literature that postulates a trade-off between child quantity and quality within a family. However, there is little causal evidence that speaks to this theory. Using a rich data set on the entire population of Norway over an extended period of time, we examine...

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...

This paper examines the causal relationship between parents' education and that of their children in Norway. In 1959, the Norwegian Parliament legislated a mandatory school reform. In addition, the reform standardized the curriculum and increased access to schools, since the nine years of...

Lower birth weight babies have worse outcomes, both short-run in terms of one-year mortality rates and longer run in terms of educational attainment and earnings. However, recent research has called into question whether birth weight itself is important or whether it simply reflects other...