Abstract This paper uses data on real and perceived cancer risks and cancer screening behavior to test the allocative efficiency theory. Specifically, it explores whether the educated make better-informed health decisions. I propose that (1) when educated individuals are better informed, they...

The large current account and capital account imbalances among OECD countries continue to attract attention among policy makers and researchers. This paper explores the extent to which migration-related capital flows can explain the movements and magnitudes of current and capital account...

The long-standing inverse relationship between education and mortality strengthened substantially later in the 20th century. This paper examines the reasons for this increase. We show that behavioral risk factors are not of primary importance. Smoking has declined more for the better educated,...

This article studies the role of employer behavior in generating "negative duration dependence"--the adverse effect of a longer unemployment spell--by sending fictitious résumés to real job postings in 100 U.S. cities. Our results indicate that the likelihood of receiving a callback for an...

Two ubiquitous empirical regularities in pay distributions are that the variance of wages increases with experience, and innovations in wage residuals have a large, unpredictable component. The leading explanations for these patterns are that over time, either firms learn about worker...

This study contains evidence on the importance of chronic disease burden on human-capital and fertility decisions in developing regions. The episode analyzed is the eradication of hookworm disease in the American South (c. 1910). In previous work (Bleakley 2002), it was shown that the hookworm...

Supervisors occupy central roles in production and performance monitoring. We study how heterogeneity in performance evaluations across supervisors affects employee and supervisor careers and firm outcomes using data on the performance system of a Scandinavian service sector firm. We show that...

Pay distributions fan out with experience. The leading explanations for this pattern are that over time, either employers learn about worker productivity but productivity remains fixed or workers' productivities themselves evolve heterogeneously. We propose a dynamic specification that nests...