Equality of Opportunity and the Distribution of Long-Run Income in Sweden Equality of opportunity is an ethical goal with almost universal appeal. The interpretation taken here is that a society has achieved equality of opportunity if it is the case that what individuals accomplish, with respect to some desirable objective, is determined wholly by their choices and personal effort, rather than ...

Overeducation and Skill Endowments: The Role of School Achievement and Vocational Training Quality Thurow’s job-competition model implies that overeducation is contingent upon the differing skill endowments of employees. As yet, only rudimentary evidence has been furnished to confirm this relationship. In the present paper, we test the theory in a more sophisticated manner, by means of a more d...

Sectoral Transformation, Turbulence, and Labor Market Dynamics in Germany This paper analyzes the interaction between structural change and labor market dynamics in West Germany, during a period in which industrial employment declined by more than 30% and service sector employment more than doubled. Using transition data on individual workers, we document a marked increase in structural change ...

The secular rise of European unemployment since the 1960s is hard to explain without reference to structural change. This is especially true in Germany, where industrial employment has declined by more than 30% and service sector employment has more than doubled over the past three decades. Using individual transition data on West German workers, we document a marked increase in structural chan...

Ethnic Identification, Intermarriage, and Unmeasured Progress by Mexican Americans Using Census and CPS data, we show that U.S.-born Mexican Americans who marry nonMexicans are substantially more educated and English proficient, on average, than are Mexican Americans who marry co-ethnics (whether they be Mexican Americans or Mexican immigrants). In addition, the non-Mexican spouses of intermarr...

This paper analyzes job mismatches in Switzerland based on a subjective measure of overqualification. According to job search and job matching theories, overqualification is a transitory problem for the individual worker that results from informational deficits. This problem ceases to exist once access to better information about the labor market allows the worker to move to a job with a better...

Silicosis is a potentially fatal but preventable occupational lung disease caused by inhaling respirable crystalline silica (silica). Chronic silicosis, the most common form, occurs after exposure to relatively low silica concentrations for >10 years. Accelerated silicosis occurs after 5-10 years of exposure to higher silica levels, and acute silicosis can occur after only weeks or months of ex...

This paper provides the first full account of intergenerational mobility in Britain using the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) for the period 1991-1999. We analyse two samples. The first is on all adults who provide information on their parents’ occupation when they were aged 14. We label this as the General Sample (G-Sample). The second is a special sample in which young adults (aged 16 o...

We study a model that integrates productive and socialization efforts with network choice and parental investments. We characterize the unique symmetric equilibrium of this game. Individuals underinvest in productive and social effort. However, solving only the investment problem can exacerbate the misallocations due to network choice, to the point that in the presence of congestion effects the...

Immigration, Citizenship, and the Size of Government This paper analyzes the political sustainability of the welfare state in an environment where immigration is the main demographic force and where governments are able to influence the size and skill composition of immigration flows. Specifically, I present a dynamic politicaleconomy model where both income redistribution and immigration polic...