We study how economic conditions at the time of choosing post-compulsory education affect intergenerational mobility. Exploiting local variation in birthplace unemployment rate at age 16 across 23 cohorts in France, we find that cohorts deciding on post-compulsory education in bad economic times...

This comment discusses Axel Gosseries contribution to Diacritica. I shall first raise some doubts about the cogency of Gosseries’ interpretation of Rawls' theory of intergenerational justice, and then argue that that interpretation is implausible in its own right

For five decades, the share of adults employed in college-degree-intensive industries, such as health care and education, has been rising. Industries that provided employment for workers without degrees, especially manufacturing, have been reducing their payrolls. This economic transition could...

How much of income inequality is due to initial opportunities relative to adult income risk? What factors determine intergenerational mobility? We study these questions with particular interest in the impact of two family choices: fertility and transfers. Fertility rates, which are higher for...

This paper constructs a quantitative model of intergenerational mobility in which lifetime income mobility is shaped by various channels including parental time investments in children. The calibrated model delivers positive educational gradients in parental time investment, as observed in the...

In an overlapping generations economy with (incomplete) financial markets but no intermediaries, there is underinvestment in safe assets. In an economy with intermediaries and no financial markets, accumulating reserves of safe assets allows returns to be smoothed, nondiversifiable risk to be...