During the past half-century, there has been a trend toward increasing the minimum age a child must reach before entering school in the United States. States have accomplished this by moving the school-entry cutoff date earlier in the school year. The evidence presented in this paper shows that these law changes increased human capital…

We use a new, matched worker-firm dataset for the United Kingdom to estimate the income loss resulting from firm closure and mass layoffs. We track workers for up to nine years after the displacement event, and the availability of predisplacement characteristics allows us to implement difference-in-differences estimators using propensity score…

Recent studies suggest that globalization increases inequality, by increasing skilled wage premiums in developing countries. This effect may be mitigated, however, if human capital responds to global opportunities. I study how the impact of globalization varies across Indian districts with different costs of learning English. Linguistic diversity…

This paper provides evidence on a wide set of margins along which labor markets can adjust in response to increases in the minimum wage, including wages, hours, employment, and ultimately labor income. Not surprisingly, the evidence indicates that low-wage workers are most strongly affected, while higher-wage workers are little affected. Workers…

Using NLSY data, we examine the long-term effects of youth unemployment on later labor market outcomes. Involuntary unemployment may yield suboptimal investments in human capital in the short run. A theoretical model of dynamic human capital investment predicts a rational "catch-up" response. Using semiparametric techniques to control for the…