In this paper, a variety of potentially explanatory indicators for child labor and school attendance in Zambia is scrutinized. By analyzing the results from a bivariate probit model, the arising doubt with regard to the income sensitivity of the child labor choice is confirmed. Among other factors, community effects influence the child labor and schooling choice. Based on the results, sensitiza...

This paper uses recent data from the UK Labour Force Survey to estimate the wage gains that individuals make on average if they complete an apprenticeship programme. The results suggest gains of around 5-7% for men, but no benefit for women. Further analysis extends the results by considering the returns by age group, by qualification obtained, by highest prior qualification and by industrial s...

Complementing prior research on income and educational mobility, we examine the intergenerational transmission of cognitive abilities. We find that individuals’ cognitive skills are positively related to their parents’ abilities, despite controlling for educational attainment and family background. Differentiating between mothers’ and fathers’ IQ transmission, we find different effects on the c...

Human Capital, Economic Growth, and Inequality in China China’s rapid growth was fueled by substantial physical capital investments applied to a large stock of medium skilled labor acquired before economic reforms began. As development proceeded, the demand for high skilled labor has grown, and, in the past decade, China has made substantial investments in producing it. The egalitarian access t...

The new training literature suggests that in a monopsonistic market employers will not only pay for fi rm-specifi c training but also for general training if the risk of poaching is limited. This implies that training participation should decrease when competition for employees is higher among fi rms. Using worker level data for Germany we fi nd that the hypothesis is supported empirically. Spe...

The socioeconomic performance of today's workers depends not only on parental skills, but also on the average skills of the ethnic group in the parents' generation (or ethnic capital). This paper investigates the link between the ethnic externality and ethnic neighborhoods. The evidence indicates that residential segregation and the external effect of ethnicity are linked, partly because ethnic...

We offer a unified analysis of the growth of low-skill service occupations between 1980 and 2005 and the concurrent polarization of US employment and wages. We hypothesize that polarization stems from the interaction between consumer preferences, which favor variety over specialization, and the falling cost of automating routine, codifiable job tasks. Applying a spatial equilibrium model, we co...

This paper studies how optimal wage tax conclusions from the classic two-period life cycle model of human capital accumulation are affected by endogenizing the number of taxpaying workers. In the absence of a corrective policy, young individuals underinvest in human capital from a social perspective because tax premiums for transfers to nonworkers are not actuarially adjusted downward for human...

Risk Aversion and Sorting into Public Sector Employment This research note uses two German data sets – the large-scale German Socio-Economic Panel and unique data from own student questionnaires – to analyse the relationship between risk aversion and the choice for public sector employment. Main results are: (1) more risk averse individuals sort into public sector employment, (2) the impact of ...