This paper develops new economic models to synthesize and interpret the empirical literature on human skill formation. It presents simple formal economic models of child development that capture the essence of recent findings from the empirical literature. The goal of this essay is to provide a theoretical framework for interpreting the evidence from a vast empirical literature, for guiding the...

This series publishes the work of the members and associates of SKOPE. A formal editorial process ensures that standards of quality and objectivity are maintained. ABSTRACT Over the past twenty five years, UK skills policy has focused primarily on boosting the supply of skilled or qualified labour. Despite significant progress on this front, British productivity continues to lag behind that of ...

the objective of this research is to explore the effect of international outsourcing on economic growth in asia-pacific countries. accordingly, a panel regression model based on soderbom and teal (2003) is estimated using data of the considered countries over the period 1995-2006. in addition to international outsourcing, the model includes human capital, labor force and physical capital as the...

By using data from a factorial survey we analyze the role of economic and cultural threat in explaining support for immigration control in Switzerland. Threat is modeled more directly than in many previous studies: Economic threat is assumed to be high when migrants and natives have similar levels of education, and perceived cultural threat is assumed to be high when nationally pride natives ar...

Whether immigrants are positively or negatively self-selected is much disputed. Whereas most previous studies have addressed this question by comparing the wages of immigrants to those of U.S. natives, this analysis uses occupation to examine the skill level of immigrants. Data on the occupational distribution of individuals granted legal permanent residence in 1995 indicate that the proportion...

This paper attempts to quantify the effect of skill shortages on the UK labour market by developing a simultaneous equation model of unemployment and real wage growth. The model is developed following a structural approach based on a priori economic information and is initially estimated using a two-stage least squares procedure. The model is also estimated using Zellner’s seemingly unrelated r...

Status is greatly valued in the real world, yet it has not received much attention from economic theorists. We examine how the owner of a firm can best combine money and status together to get his employees to work hard for the least total cost. We find that he should motivate workers of low skill mostly by status and high skill mostly by money. Moreover, he should do so by using a small number...

Developmental theories often posit that changes in children's early psychological characteristics will affect much later psychological, social, and economic outcomes. However, tests of these theories frequently yield results that are consistent with plausible alternative theories that posit a much smaller causal role for earlier levels of these psychological characteristics. Our article explore...

BACKGROUND Drug abuse is now-a-days one of the gravest social harms. Recent years have experienced a drastic rise in drug abuse among school and university students. Thus, the need for special attention to the issue is deemed important. The present study was conducted with the aim of assessing the impact of life skills training on promotion of drug abuse preventive behaviors. METHODS This fie...

INTRODUCTION There is paucity in the research on transfer validity of arthroscopic simulator training. The aim of this article is to determine whether skills derived from arthroscopic simulation are transferrable to the operating theatre and retained over time. METHODS A systematic review with rigorous criteria to identify the highest level of evidence available was carried out. The studies w...