European economic growth has been weak, compared to the US, since the 80s. In previous work (Krueger and Kumar, 2003), we argued that the European focus on specialized, vocational education might have been effective during the 60s and 70s, but resulted in a growth gap relative to the US during...

In this paper, we develop a model of technology adoption and economic growth in which households optimally obtain either a concept-based, general' education or a skill-specific, vocational' education. General education is more costly to obtain, but enables workers to operate new technologies...

A growing literature relies on natural experiments to establish causal effects in macroeconomics. In diverse applications, natural experiments have been used to verify underlying assumptions of conventional models, quantify specific model parameters, and identify mechanisms that have major...

A growing literature relies on natural experiments to establish causal effects in macroeconomics. In diverse applications, natural experiments have been used to verify underlying assumptions of conventional models, quantify specific model parameters, and identify mechanisms that have major...