The empirically observed hump-shaped pattern in individuals' consumption over their life cycle cannot be explained by the classical consumption-savings model. We explicitly solve an extended model with utility depending on both consumption and leisure and with endogenous educational decisions...

The empirically observed hump-shaped pattern in individuals' consumption over their life cycle cannot be explained by the classical consumption-savings model. We explicitly solve an extended model with utility depending on both consumption and leisure and with endogenous educational decisions...

The observed hump-shaped life-cycle pattern in individuals' consumption cannot be explained by the classical consumption-savings model. The consensus explanation is that the hump is caused by constraints and unspanned risks. However, we explicitly show that the consumption hump naturally emerges...

The observed hump-shaped life-cycle pattern in individuals' consumption cannot be explained by the classical consumption-savings model. We explicitly solve a model with utility of both consumption and leisure and with educational decisions affecting future wages. We show optimal consumption is...

Households face earnings risk which is non-normal and varies by age and over the income distribution. We show that, in the context of a structurally estimated life-cycle portfolio choice model, allowing for these rich features of earnings dynamics helps to better understand the limited...

This paper presents and estimates a unified model where both human capital investment and job search are endogenized. This unification enables us to quantify the relative contributions of each mechanism to life cycle earnings growth, while investigating potential interactions between human...

We merge experimental data on competitiveness of a large sample of students with their complete educational history for up to ten years after the initial assessment. Exploiting quasi-random class assignments, we find that having competitive peers as classmates makes students choose and secure...

Success in life increasingly depends on key skills that allow people to thrive in education, the labor market, and their interactions with others. In this paper, we emphasize creativity as a key skill that is essential to open-ended problem solving and resistant to automation. We use rich...

This article investigates the extent to which personality traits and cognitive skills can be seen as potential determinants of overeducation, and can explain the overeducation wage penalty. Using a representative survey of the Polish working-age population with well-established measures of...

Personality traits, preferences, and attitudes significantly influence labor market outcomes, and these non-cognitive skills are shaped by the social environment. While curriculum interventions can impact these skills, the effect of compulsory education on noncognitive skills is less well...