We document the evolution of productivity in a steel mini mill with fixed capital, producing an unchanged product with Leontief technology working 24/7. Despite—almost—unchanged production conditions, output doubled within the sample period (12 years). We decompose the gains into downtime reductions, more rounds of production per time, and more output per run. After attributing productivity gai...

We use unique data to estimate the determinants of cognitive ability among 14 to 17 year olds in Senegal. Unlike standard school-based samples, tests were administered to current students as well as to children no longer—or never—enrolled. Years of schooling strongly affects cognitive skills, but conditional on years of school, parental education and household wealth, as well as local public sc...

This paper examines the relationship between course scheduling and student achievement, controlling for student and course characteristics. The literature in psychology recognizes that performance varies by time of day and that spacing learning out over time may foster greater long-term memory of items. We use student grades as a measure of performance and find a small, positive time of day eff...

The Effect of Overskilling Dynamics on Wages We use a random effects dynamic probit model to estimate the effect of overskilling dynamics on wages. We find that overskilling mismatch is common and more likely among those who have been overskilled in the past. It is also highly persistent, in a manner that is inversely related to educational level. Yet, the wages of university graduates are redu...

The Dynamics of Entrepreneurship: Hysteresis, Business Cycles and Government Policy This paper estimates an unobserved components model to explore the macro dynamics of entrepreneurship in Spain and the US. We ask whether entrepreneurship exhibits hysteresis, defined as a macro dynamic structure in which cyclical fluctuations have persistent effects on the natural rate of entrepreneurship. We f...

We study a search model where workers can send multiple applications to high and low productivity firms. Firms that compete for the same candidate can increase their wage offers as often as they like. We show that there is a unique equilibrium where workers mix between sending both applications to the high and both to the low productivity sector. Efficiency requires however that they apply to b...

Male and female choices differ in many economic situations, e.g., on the labor market. This paper considers whether such differences are driven by different attitudes towards competition. In our experiment subjects choose between a tournament and a piecerate pay scheme before performing a real task. Men choose the tournament significantly more often than women. Women are mainly influenced by th...

We investigate empirically the returns to postsecondary education allowing the returns to vary among delayers and non delayers post secondary graduates. Using a unique survey that collects information on a representative cohort of graduates, we are able to estimate the effects of delaying school among successful graduates abstracting from specific macroeconomic conditions at the time of graduat...

We introduce publicly funded education in R&D-based economic growth theory. The framework allows us to i) incorporate a realistic process of human capital accumulation for industrialized countries, ii) reconcile R&D-based growth theory with the empirical evidence on the relationship between economic prosperity and population growth, iii) revise the policy invariance result of semi-endogenous gr...

We use data from a résumé audit to estimate the impact of unemployment and underemployment on the employment prospects facing recent college graduates. We find no statistical evidence of negative duration dependence associated with unemployment spells for recent college graduates. Alternatively, college graduates who are underemployed have callback rates that are 30 percent lower than that for ...