The Different Returns to Cognitive Ability in the Labor and Capital Markets

The Different Returns to Cognitive Ability in the Labor and Capital Markets PDF Author: Spencer Bastani
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
We investigate the returns to cognitive ability in the labor and capital markets. Using population-wide Swedish military enlistment data and administrative tax records, we find that cognitive ability is much better at predicting capital income than labor earnings. The difference is almost a factor of three and remains substantial even after controlling for education, occupation, savings, inheritance, and parental background. Moreover, ability is significantly positively correlated with wealth returns. Our results provide new insights into why inequality in capital income is greater than in labor income and shed light on the drivers of economic mobility.

The Different Returns to Cognitive Ability in the Labor and Capital Markets

The Different Returns to Cognitive Ability in the Labor and Capital Markets PDF Author: Spencer Bastani
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
We investigate the returns to cognitive ability in the labor and capital markets. Using population-wide Swedish military enlistment data and administrative tax records, we find that cognitive ability is much better at predicting capital income than labor earnings. The difference is almost a factor of three and remains substantial even after controlling for education, occupation, savings, inheritance, and parental background. Moreover, ability is significantly positively correlated with wealth returns. Our results provide new insights into why inequality in capital income is greater than in labor income and shed light on the drivers of economic mobility.

Return on Cognitive Ability in the Labor Market

Return on Cognitive Ability in the Labor Market PDF Author: David Lee Brownfield
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cognition
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description


Education, Skills, and Technical Change

Education, Skills, and Technical Change PDF Author: Charles R. Hulten
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022656794X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 528

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Book Description
Over the past few decades, US business and industry have been transformed by the advances and redundancies produced by the knowledge economy. The workplace has changed, and much of the work differs from that performed by previous generations. Can human capital accumulation in the United States keep pace with the evolving demands placed on it, and how can the workforce of tomorrow acquire the skills and competencies that are most in demand? Education, Skills, and Technical Change explores various facets of these questions and provides an overview of educational attainment in the United States and the channels through which labor force skills and education affect GDP growth. Contributors to this volume focus on a range of educational and training institutions and bring new data to bear on how we understand the role of college and vocational education and the size and nature of the skills gap. This work links a range of research areas—such as growth accounting, skill development, higher education, and immigration—and also examines how well students are being prepared for the current and future world of work.

Labor Market Returns and the Evolution of Cognitive Skills

Labor Market Returns and the Evolution of Cognitive Skills PDF Author: Santiago Hermo
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A large literature in cognitive science studies the puzzling "Flynn effect" of rising fluid intelligence (reasoning skill) in rich countries. We develop an economic model in which a cohort's mix of skills is determined by different skills' relative returns in the labor market and by the technology for producing skills. We estimate the model using administrative data from Sweden. Combining data from exams taken at military enlistment with earnings records from the tax register, we document an increase in the relative labor market return to logical reasoning skill as compared to vocabulary knowledge. The estimated model implies that changes in labor market returns explain 36 percent of the measured increase in reasoning skill, and can also explain the decline in knowledge. An original survey of parents, an analysis of trends in school curricula, and an analysis of occupational characteristics show evidence of increasing emphasis on reasoning as compared to knowledge.

Cognitive Performance and Labor Market Outcomes

Cognitive Performance and Labor Market Outcomes PDF Author: Dajun Lin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ability
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description
We use information from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and supplementary data sources to examine how cognitive performance, measured at approximately the end of secondary schooling, is related to the labor market outcomes of 20 through 50 year olds. Our estimates control for a wide array of individual and family background characteristics, a limited set of non-cognitive attributes, survey year dummy variables and, sometimes, geographic place effects. The analysis reveals five main findings. First, cognitive performance is positively associated with future labor market outcomes at all ages. The relationship is attenuated but not eliminated by the addition of controls for non-cognitive characteristics, while the inclusion of place effects does not change the estimated associations. Second, the returns to cognitive skill increase with age. Third, the effect on total incomes reflects a combination of positive impacts of cognitive performance for both hourly wages and annual work hours. Fourth, the returns to cognitive skill are greater for women than men and for blacks and Hispanics than for non-Hispanic whites, with differential effects on work hours being more important than corresponding changes in hourly wages. Fifth, the average gains in lifetime incomes predicted to result from greater levels of cognitive performance are only slightly above those reported in prior studies but the effects are heterogeneous, with larger relative and absolute increases, in most models, for nonwhites or Hispanics than for non-Hispanic whites, and higher relative but not absolute returns for women than men.

Returns to capital in microenterprises : evidence from a field experiment

Returns to capital in microenterprises : evidence from a field experiment PDF Author: Christopher Woodruff, David McKenzie, Suresh de Mel
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 37

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Book Description
Abstract: Small and informal firms account for a large share of employment in developing countries. The rapid expansion of microfinance services is based on the belief that these firms have productive investment opportunities and can enjoy high returns to capital if given the opportunity. However, measuring the return to capital is complicated by unobserved factors such as entrepreneurial ability and demand shocks, which are likely to be correlated with capital stock. The authors use a randomized experiment to overcome this problem and to measure the return to capital for the average microenterprise in their sample, regardless of whether they apply for credit. They accomplish this by providing cash and equipment grants to small firms in Sri Lanka, and measuring the increase in profits arising from this exogenous (positive) shock to capital stock. After controlling for possible spillover effects, the authors find the average real return to capital to be 5.7 percent a month, substantially higher than the market interest rate. They then examine the heterogeneity of treatment effects to explore whether missing credit markets or missing insurance markets are the most likely cause of the high returns. Returns are found to vary with entrepreneurial ability and with measures of other sources of cash within the household, but not to vary with risk aversion or uncertainty.

Who's Not Working and Why

Who's Not Working and Why PDF Author: Frederic L. Pryor
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521794398
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
Presenting a radically different view of the operations of the labor market, in this 1999 book Professors Pryor and Schaffer explain the growing inequality in wages and how those with the least education are being squeezed out of the labor market. Why have wages in those jobs requiring extra-high cognitive skills risen while all other wages have stagnated or fallen? And why are more university graduates taking high-school jobs? The authors of this volume present data revealing that jobs which require a high educational level are increasing more slowly than those with somewhat lower requirements. However such jobs are increasing faster than those requiring still less formal education. Professors Pryor and Schaffer also show how women are replacing men in jobs which require higher levels of education and, moreover, how those with high cognitive skills are replacing those with lower cognitive skills.

Handbook of Labor Economics

Handbook of Labor Economics PDF Author: Orley Ashenfelter
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 9780444501899
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 800

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Book Description
A guide to the continually evolving field of labour economics.

The Economics of Poverty Traps

The Economics of Poverty Traps PDF Author: Christopher B. Barrett
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022657430X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
What circumstances or behaviors turn poverty into a cycle that perpetuates across generations? The answer to this question carries especially important implications for the design and evaluation of policies and projects intended to reduce poverty. Yet a major challenge analysts and policymakers face in understanding poverty traps is the sheer number of mechanisms—not just financial, but also environmental, physical, and psychological—that may contribute to the persistence of poverty all over the world. The research in this volume explores the hypothesis that poverty is self-reinforcing because the equilibrium behaviors of the poor perpetuate low standards of living. Contributions explore the dynamic, complex processes by which households accumulate assets and increase their productivity and earnings potential, as well as the conditions under which some individuals, groups, and economies struggle to escape poverty. Investigating the full range of phenomena that combine to generate poverty traps—gleaned from behavioral, health, and resource economics as well as the sociology, psychology, and environmental literatures—chapters in this volume also present new evidence that highlights both the insights and the limits of a poverty trap lens. The framework introduced in this volume provides a robust platform for studying well-being dynamics in developing economies.

The Knowledge Capital of Nations

The Knowledge Capital of Nations PDF Author: Eric A. Hanushek
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026254895X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
A rigorous, pathbreaking analysis demonstrating that a country's prosperity is directly related in the long run to the skills of its population. In this book Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann make a simple, central claim, developed with rigorous theoretical and empirical support: knowledge is the key to a country's development. Of course, every country acknowledges the importance of developing human capital, but Hanushek and Woessmann argue that message has become distorted, with politicians and researchers concentrating not on valued skills but on proxies for them. The common focus is on school attainment, although time in school provides a very misleading picture of how skills enter into development. Hanushek and Woessmann contend that the cognitive skills of the population—which they term the “knowledge capital” of a nation—are essential to long-run prosperity. Hanushek and Woessmann subject their hypotheses about the relationship between cognitive skills (as consistently measured by international student assessments) and economic growth to a series of tests, including alternate specifications, different subsets of countries, and econometric analysis of causal interpretations. They find that their main results are remarkably robust, and equally applicable to developing and developed countries. They demonstrate, for example, that the “Latin American growth puzzle” and the “East Asian miracle” can be explained by these regions' knowledge capital. Turning to the policy implications of their argument, they call for an education system that develops effective accountability, promotes choice and competition, and provides direct rewards for good performance.