Economists disagree about the factors driving the substantial increase in residual wage inequality in the U.S. over the past few decades. We identify and estimate a general model of log wage residuals that incorporates: (i) changing returns to unobserved skills, (ii) a changing distribution of...

This paper quantifies the contribution of human capital accumulation to the growth of real gross domestic product (GDP) in Canada. GDP growth is decomposed into contributions from physical capital, hours worked, human capital supplied per hour and total factor productivity. Using a "flat spot"...

Gregariousness is an important aspect of human life with implications for labour market outcomes. The paper examines, to the best of our knowledge for the first time for Germany, gregariousness and social interaction at the workplace and associated wage differentials. Our empirical findings with...

Wage expectations are important determinants for individual schooling decisions. However, research on individual expectations of students is scarce. The paper presents the Swiss results of a survey that was conducted in 10 European countries. Its main findings are that point estimates of wages...

We examine the differences in an index of standardized test performance of urban private/public school seniors by race, using a sample of 4,172 students from the 1992 U.S. National Education Longitudinal Survey. In addition to using 257 exogenous variables to control for individual traits,...

The concept of asset specificity has become very prominent in the literature on skill formation, welfare states and labour markets. While acknowledging remaining empirical obstacles in measuring asset specificity, this paper takes a more theoretical approach, arguing that a significant share of...

Endogenous, ideas-led growth theory and the literature on agent-based modeling with neighborhood effects are crossed. In an economic overlapping generations framework, it is shown how social interactions and neighborhood effects are of vital importance in the endogenous determination of the long...

Self-productivity is a crucial feature in the process of skill formation. It means that skills and health acquired at one stage in the life cycle enhance skills and health formation at later stages. This paper presents an empirical investigation of self-productivity in early childhood in...

Achievement test scores not only reflect students’ ability, knowledge and intelligence, but also their noncognitive skills such as personality traits and motivation. If multiple traits determine test scores, an important question is whether it is feasible to unravel the information from one...