from physical to human capital accumulation inequality and the process of development this paper develops a growth theory that captures the replacement of physical capital accumulation by human capital accumulation as a prime engine of growth along the process of development it argues that the positive impact of inequality on the growth process was reversed in this process in early stages of the industrial revolution when physical capital accumulation was the prime source of growth inequality stimulated development by channelling resources towards individuals with a higher propensity to save as human capital emerged as a growth engine equality alleviated adverse effects of credit constraints on human capital accumulation stimulating the growth process this research develops a growth theory that captures the endogenous replacement of physical capital accumulation by human capital accumulation as a prime engine of economic growth in the transition from the industrial revolution to modern growth the proposed theory offers a unified account for the effect of income inequality on the growth process during this transition it argues that the replacement of physical capital accumulation by human capital accumulation as a prime engine of economic growth changed the qualitative impact of inequality on the process of development in the early stages of the industrial revolution when physical capital accumulation was the prime source of economic growth inequality enhanced the process of development by channelling resources towards individuals whose marginal propensity to save is higher in the later stages of the transition to modern growth as human capital emerged as a prime engine of economic growth equality alleviated the adverse effect of credit constraints on human capital accumulation and stimulated the growth process the proposed theory unifies two fundamental approaches regarding the effect of income distribution on the process of development the classical approach and the credit market imperfection approach 1 the classical approach was originated by smith 1776 and was further interpreted and developed by keynes 1920 lewis 1954 kaldor 1957 and bourguignon 1981 according to this approach saving rates are an increasing function of wealth and inequality therefore channels resources towards individuals whose marginal propensity to save 1 the socio political economy approach provides an alternative mechanism equality diminishes the tendency for socio political instability or distortionary redistribution and hence it stimulates investment and economic growth see the comprehensive survey of benabou 1996b

warrant valuation and exercise strategy abstract this paper demonstrates that warrant valuation and exercise strategy differ fundamentally from call option valuation simultaneous exercise of warrants is shown to be suboptimal and a monopolist owning all warrants can achieve a higher value unless warrants are perfectly divisible no satisfactory equilibrium exists for the valuation and exercise of widely held warrants the problems encountered appear to be quite general and stem from necessary assumptions about future corporate dividend policy and capital structure such assumptions are necessary for any model of corporate security valuation

a mismatch made in heaven a hedonic analysis of overeducation and undereducation in this paper a hedonic pairing process is modeled in which some workers may be overeducated or undereducated as an equilibrium outcome of a dynamic labor market undereducated workers are those whose abilities and training permit them to move into a job with higher qualifications whereas overeducated workers are highly qualified workers who select into lower skill entry level jobs that provide the training or signal necessary for promotion the empirical model shows that these pairing types cannot be directly identified in a cross section since all workers are exactly educated during a portion of their career however pairing types may be imputed by comparing predicted and observed qualifications of the worker and predicted and observed requirements of the firm using a rich cross section and a panel of british working age males to identify the pairing types we confirm the predicted career development patterns with regard to on the job training promotion and wages

changes in the world distribution of income between 1950 and 1977 trends in the world distribution of income are much discussed and philosophised about the issue of increasing economic inequality among nonsocialist countries in the post war period is central to the debate about the international economic order in i969 the pearson commission report was already pointing to the widening gap between the developed and developing countries as a central issue of our time and was proposing the reduction of that gap as the main objective of international co operation according to that report gnp per capita had increased between i960 and i967 at annual rates of 2 5 and 3 6 in developing and developed countries respectively morawetz i978 found that the gap between the two sets of countries rose from i 2 6 fold in i950 to i3 2 fold in i975 other authors see a more complicated picture atkinson i975 for instance has argued that although the share of poor countries in world income probably declined between i950 and i970 that of the countries at the middle of the world distribution probably increased 2 what may be a mere assessment of relative growth performances among nonsocialist countries becomes a basic theoretical element in the radical stream of economic literature for authors like amin i974 emmanuel i972 and frank i978 the capitalist mode of development necessarily leads to the rich countries of the centre becoming richer and poor countries of the periphery becoming poorer in a degree depending on their involvement in international trade for them a widening gap between developed and developing countries is simply the statistical confirmation of an unavoidable consequence of the national and international capitalist system in the latter perspective the issue at stake is of such importance that the contrast between the abundance of theoretical literature and the lack of empirical work is striking the few existing studies of changes in world distribution provide an inadequate picture intra country income distributions are not taken into account observation periods do not exceed i5 years 8 for andic and peacock i96i and for beckerman and bacon i970 i5 for kirman and tomasini i969 socialist as well as some non socialist countries are excluded and national incomes are converted to u s dollars at official exchange rates 3 finally none of these studies covers the i970s although several shocks which might have affected world distribution occurred during that decade for the non socialist countries to which they refer the andic peacock and beckerman bacon studies found the gini coefficient almost constant over

tax limits and local elections this paper exploits variation in tax limits across over 7000 italian municipalities during the 2000s to investigate their impact on voter turnout and local election outcomes the empirical analysis is based on a panel data estimator on about 14 000 municipal elections during the 2001 2010 decade and on a quasi experimental approach focusing on the fiscal limitation treatment of municipalities local income surcharge freeze in the years 2001 and 2006 where the trajectory of local turnout in the concurrent general elections is used as the counterfactual the evidence suggests that tax limits provoke a a modest fall in voter turnout in mayoral elections b a mild decrease in the number of mayoral candidates c a sizeable widening of elected mayors win margins and some improvement in mayors valence proxies the evidence is compatible with the hypothesis that the imposition of tax limits lowers the ideological stakes of local elections favors party line crossing and promotes vote convergence based on the valence of candidates

pricing warrants an empirical study of the black scholes model and its alternatives this paper uses a sample of over 25 000 daily warrant prices to empirically investigate potential problems with the commonly used warrant pricing model proposed by black and scholes as an extension of their call option model one problem seems to be especially important the constant variance assumption of the dilution adjusted blackscholes model appears to cause biases in model prices for almost all warrants and over the entire sample period we show that more accurate price forecasts are obtained with a specific form of the constant elasticity of variance model since the derivation of the black scholes model financial economists have speculated on its usefulness for warrant valuation in their pathbreaking paper black and scholes 1973 claim that in many cases their model can be used as an approximation to give an estimate of the warrant value however black and scholes 1973 warn that

mismatch in the spanish labor market overeducation the objective of this article is to explain the job match which is assessed by comparing attained education and job required education as reported by workers we frame our empirical work according to the occupational mobility theory using a cross section of workers from a representative survey of the spanish labor force we consider overeducated workers to be those who report that the level of education their jobs require is below the level of education they have attained our results indicate that overeducated workers have less experience decreased on thejob training and higher turnover than other comparable workers we also observe an improvement in the job match over age and mobility

income distribution and macroeconomics this paper analyzes the role of wealth distribution in macroeconomics through investment in human capital it is shown that in the presence of credit markets imperfections and indivisibilities in investment in human capital the initial distribution of wealth affects aggregate output and investment both in the short and in the long run as there are multiple steady states this paper therefore provides an additional explanation for the persistent differences in per capita output across countries furthermore the paper shows that cross country differences in macroeconomic adjustment to aggregate shocks can be attributed among other factors to differences in wealth and income distribution across countries

does education expansion increase intergenerational mobility education expansion may lead to over education where the social connections of parents may exert more significant influence on the return to education of children with the assumption of a positive correlation between return on human capital and parental income in the presence of over education we show that i the expansion of education may cause horizontal inequity in education opportunities and inefficiency in human capital accumulation ii the positive correlation between return on human capital and parental income causes a more persistent intergenerational immobility iii an expansion of education especially higher education leads to more persistent intergenerational immobility

determinants of the demand for education in spain the aim of this paper is to estimate an equation for household demand for both secondary and university education using an estimation of the opportunity cost associated with the decision to invest in education limited dependent variable models are applied to the data provided by the family budget survey 1991 for spain the results show that the social and economic status of the family has a comparatively greater impact on household expenditure on secondary education than on university education the opportunity cost is also shown to be a decisive variable in the decision to invest in secondary education although the results are less conclusive in the case of university education

regression toward mediocrity in economic stature this paper provides estimates of the correlation in lifetime earnings between fathers and sons intergenerational data from the national longitudinal survey are used earlier studies conducted for the united states report elasticities of children s earnings with respect to parent s earnings of 0 2 or less suggesting extensive integenerational mobility these estimates however are biased downward by error contaminated measures of lifetime economic status estimates presented in this paper correct for the problem of measurement error and find the intergenerational correlation in income to be on the order of 0 4 this suggests considerably less intergenerational mobility than previously believed jel j62

political equilibrium income distribution and growth this paper analyzes the impact of income distribution on growth when investment in human capital is the source of growth and individuals vote over the degree of redistribution in the economy the model has three main features first very different patterns of income distribution are conducive to high growth at different levels of per capita income second growth is associated with an externality whereby investment in human capital by one group increases the productivity of other groups thus potentially enabling them to invest in human capital third the initial pattern of income distribution and the resulting political equilibrium are crucial in determining whether the transmission of this externality is promoted in which case growth is enhanced or prevented in which case growth is stopped using a non overlapping generations model with voting i derive several empirical implications in particular the model implies an inverted u relation between levels of inequality and levels of income in cross sections but not necessarily in time series a result that seems consistent with a number of empirical studies

intergenerational income mobility in the united states social scientists and policy analysts have long expressed concern about the extent of intergenerational income mobility in the united states but remarkably little empirical evidence is available the few existing estimates of the intergenerational correlation in income have been biased downward by measurement error unrepresentative samples or both new estimates based on intergenerational data from the panel study of income dynamics imply that the intergenerational correlation in long run income is at least 0 4 indicating dramatically less mobility than suggested by earlier research copyright 1992 by american economic association

overeducation undereducation and the theory of career mobility the theory of career mobility sicherman and galor journal of political economy 98 1 169 92 1990 claims that wage penalties for overeducated workers are compensated by better promotion prospects sicherman journal of labour economics 9 2 101 22 1991 was able to confirm this theory in an empirical study using panel data however the only retest using panel data so far robst eastern economic journal 21 539 50 1995 produced rather ambiguous results in the present paper random effects models to analyse relative wage growth are estimated using data from the german socio economic panel it is found that overeducated workers in germany have markedly lower relative wage growth rates than adequately educated workers the results cast serious doubt on whether the career mobility model is able to explain overeducation in germany the plausibility of the results is supported by the finding that overeducated workers have less access to formal and informal on the job training which is usually foun

skills mismatch concepts measurement and policy approaches the term skills mismatch is very broad and can relate to many forms of labour market friction including vertical mismatch skill gaps skill shortages field of study horizontal mismatch and skill obsolescence in this paper we provide a clear overview of each concept and discuss the measurement and inter relatedness of different forms of mismatch we present a comprehensive analysis of the current position of the literature on skills mismatch and highlight areas which are relatively underdeveloped and may warrant further research using data from the european skills and jobs survey we assess the incidence of various combinations of skills mismatch across the eu finally we review the european commission s country specific recommendations and find that skills mismatch when referring to underutilized human capital in the form of overeducation and skills underutilization receives little policy attention in cases where skills mismatch forms part of policy recommendations the policy advice is either vague or addresses the areas of mismatch for which there is the least available evidence

does having a cadre parent pay evidence from the first job offers of chinese college graduates abstract we estimate the wage premium associated with having a cadre parent in china using a recent survey of college graduates carried out by the authors the wage premium of having a cadre parent is 15 and this premium cannot be explained by other observables such as college entrance exam scores quality of colleges and majors a full set of college human capital attributes and job characteristics these results suggest that the remaining premium could be the true wage premium of having a cadre parent

gender wage differentials and educational mismatch an application to the spanish case this article aims to analyse gender wage differentials in spain by taking into account the levels of educational attainment and by studying whether the educational mismatch affects the gender wage gap focusing on returns to education evidence is found on the existence of educational mismatch and on its contribution to determine wages with women suffering greater wage penalties that are associated with educational mismatch furthermore although the gender wage gap is lower for individuals with low educational levels we find that the part of this gap due to differences in returns is greater in this group on the contrary the gender gap is greater among highly educated workers but in this case most of the wage differentials are due to differences in productive characteristics in any case our results suggest that gender wage discrimination tends to be greater for those workers who show educational mismatch

a theory of career mobility this paper analyzes theoretically and empirically the role and significance of occupational mobility in the labor market focusing on individuals careers it provides additional dimensions to the analysis of investment in human capital wage differences across individuals and the relationships among promotions quits and interfirm occupational mobility it is shown that part of the returns to education is in the form of higher probabilities of occupational upgrading within or across firms given an origin occupation schooling increases the likelihood of occupational upgrading furthermore workers who are not promoted despite a high probability of promotion are more likely to quit

intergenerational transfers of public sector jobs a shred of evidence on nepotism the attractiveness of public sector jobs in italy may induce parents working in this sector to use their positions and the network of relationships to favor their sons daughters in gaining access to public sector jobs we verify whether children of public employees effectively enjoy an advantage estimating a model of the probability of working in the public sector controlling for individual characteristics and labor market conditions we show that if the father is a public employee the probability of his child working in the same sector is increased by a huge 44 this advantage is larger for low ability individuals stayers and southern italian residents we interpret these findings as evidence of nepotism in public employment

political competition policy and growth theory and evidence from the us this paper develops a simple model to analyse how a lack of political competition may lead to policies that hinder economic growth we test the predictions of the model on panel data for the us states in these data we find robust evidence that lack of political competition in a state is associated with anti growth policies higher taxes lower capital spending and a reduced likelihood of using right to work laws we also document a strong link between low political competition and low income growth

competence and ideology we develop a dynamic repeated election model in which citizen candidates are distinguished by both their ideology and valence voters observe an incumbent s valence and policy choices but only know the challenger s party our model provides a rich set of novel results in contrast to existing predictions from static models we prove that dynamic considerations make higher valence incumbents more likely to compromise and win re election even though they compromise to more extreme policies consequently we find that the correlation between valence and extremist policies rises with office holder seniority this result may help explain previous empirical findings despite this result we establish that the whole electorate gains from improvements in the distribution of valences in contrast fixing average valence the greater dispersion in valence associated with a high valence political elite always benefits the median voter but can harm a majority of voters when voters are sufficiently risk averse we then consider interest groups igs or activists who search for candidates with better skills we derive a complete theoretical explanation for the intuitive conjectures that policies are more extreme when igs and activists have more extreme ideologies and that such extremism reduces the welfare of all voters

true world income distribution 1988 and 1993 first calculation based on household surveys alone the paper derives world income or expenditure distribution of individuals for two years 1988 and 1993 it is the first paper to calculate world distribution for individuals based entirely on household survey data from 91 countries and adjusted for differences in purchasing power parity between the countries measured by the gini index inequality increased from an already very high 63 in 1988 to 66 in 1993 the increase was driven more by rising differences in mean incomes between the countries than by rising inequalities within countries the most important contributors were rising urban rural differences in china and slow growth of rural incomes in south asia compared to several large developed market economies

the power to tax analytical foundations of a fiscal constitution preface 1 taxation in constitutional perspective 2 natural government a model of leviathan 3 constraints on base and rate structure 4 the taxation of commodities 5 taxation through time income taxes capital taxes and public debt 6 money creation and taxation 7 the disposition of public revenues 8 the domain of politics 9 open economy federalism and taxing authority 10 toward authentic tax reform prospects and prescriptions epilogue notes selected bibliography index

a model of candidate location when one candidate has a valence advantage that under some fairly weak assumptions for all levels of the valence advantage the advantaged candidate chooses a more moderate position than the disadvantaged candidate empirical studies of congressional elections by fiorina 1973 and ansolabehere snyder and stewart 2001 support this result d owns 1957 seminal work presents a puzzle for scholars of u s elections why do candidates not converge to the median voter one of the best explanations is that the candidates themselves have ideological preferences as calvert 1985 and wittman 1977 1983 have shown when candidates have such preferences and they are sufficiently uncertain about the preferences of the median voter then they do not converge although they may moderate their positions from their ideal point the basic version of the calvert wittman model however does not account for another basic fact of u s elections often one of the candidates has an advantage due to a nonpolicy factor such as incumbency greater campaign funds better name recognition superior charisma superior intelligence and so on stokes has dubbed such factors valence factors and he has noted their importance in u s elections stokes 1963 1992 1 in this article i extend the basic calvert wittman model by giving one candidate a valence advantage over the other i show that if the valence characteristics of the candidates are approximately equal then when a candidate s valence advantage increases this causes her to move toward the

double penalty in returns to education informality and educational mismatch in the colombian labour market abstractthis article examines the returns to education taking into consideration the existence of educational mismatches in the formal and informal employment of a developing country results show that the returns of surplus required and deficit years of schooling are different in the two sectors moreover they suggest that these returns vary along the wage distribution and that the pattern of variation differs for formal and informal workers in particular informal workers face not only lower returns to their education but suffer a second penalty associated with educational mismatches that puts them at a greater disadvantage compare to their formal counterparts

graduate overeducation as a sheepskin effect evidence from northern ireland this article examines the nature of graduate overeducation amongst a group of applicants to a graduate conversion programme it was found that while a substantial proportion of earnings differentials were associated with a mismatch between individual skill levels and job requirements wage gaps were still likely to occur should such mismatches be eliminated the evidence suggests that graduate wage levels are heavily related to sheepskin effects associated with the attainment of jobs with graduate level entry requirements these sheepskin effects suggest that the process of job categorization is arbitrary in nature with stated job requirements somewhat independent of actual skill requirements the analysis suggests that graduate overeduction is better understood within the context of both skill and categorization mismatches as opposed to skill matches alone

overqualification permanent or transitory this article analyses job mismatches in switzerland based on a subjective measure of overqualification according to job search and job matching theories overqualification is a transitory problem other theories show that overqualification can also be of a permanent nature we test the perpetuity of overeducation using panel data from the first eight waves of the swiss household panel shp covering the period 1999 to 2006 our empirical analysis reveals little evidence for lasting rigidities that would cause permanent job mismatches rather spells of overqualification are relatively short about half of all individuals who were overqualified in a given year had an adequate job match 1 year later while a short duration of overqualification would be consistent with job search and job matching theories our observation that the probability of a job mismatch does not significantly decrease with experience is at odds with these theories our article provides an alternative explanation for this phenomenon

overeducation undereducation and asymmetric information in occupational mobility due to short term asymmetric information overeducated and undereducated workers are shown to have different optimal strategies in seeking upward occupational mobility into their next positions undereducated workers typically have other human capital strengths but these strengths are not marketable to outsiders overeducated workers typically have other human capital weaknesses that are not apparent to outsiders while their excess schooling is marketable in labour markets with dynamic asymmetric information this article presents empirical evidence showing that job tenure increases the probability of upward occupational mobility more if individuals are undereducated moreover the probability of finding upward occupational mobility is increased by overeducated workers engaging in firm switching this article also validates prior empirical studies finding overeducated workers more likely to self report engaging in firm switching activities and more likely to experience upward occupational mobility than o

overeducation in the labor market this article examines the reasons for the observed discrepancy between workers actual and required levels of schooling and the resulting differences in returns to schooling overeducated workers are found to be younger and to have lower amounts of on the job training than workers with the required level of schooling they also have higher rates of firm and occupational mobility characterized by movement of higher level occupations the findings suggest that overeducation can be explained by the trade off between schooling and other components of human capital and by the mobility patterns of overeducated workers

overeducation in the labour market abstract this paper presents a review of the literature on overeducation the paper assesses the consistency of overeducation within the context of a number of theoretical frameworks including human capital theory hct and assignment theory the analysis goes on to discuss the various measurement controversies associated with the study of overeducation in order to provide an assessment of the extent to which the impacts of the phenomenon represent an economic reality as opposed to a statistical artefact after reviewing the literature it is concluded that the impacts of overeducation are likely to be non trivial and that the phenomenon may potentially be costly to individuals and firms as well as the economy more generally the existence of overeducation also raises some doubts with respect to the validity of some of the central assumptions and predictions of hct that are unlikely to be fully explained by gaps in the standard wage equation framework

crossing party lines the eects of information on redistributive politics this paper explores how the quality of information available to voters in uences the choices they make in the polling booth and in turn aects the strategies of political parties competing for their support to do so the paper builds a model of redistributive politics under asymmetric information and then tests the resulting propositions with data from recent elections in sierra leone using the lindbeck and weibull 1987 model as a foundation i incorporate a new determinant of voting choice candidate quality which is only imperfectly observed by voters i show that voters with better information about candidates are more likely to cross ethnic party lines to support a high quality candidate furthermore since information encourages voters to consider characteristics like candidate charisma that are di cult for parties to observe it makes party forecasting of expected vote shares more uncertain such electoral uncertainty in turn induces parties to spread their resources more evenly across jurisdictions two institutional attributes of the empirical setting ethnicity based politics and decentralization enable direct tests of these informational propositions as well as a novel identi cation strategy for the classic swing voter hypothesis my results suggest that information could break the low accountability equilibrium in which citizens cast their votes blindly along partisan lines creating little incentive for political parties to invest in candidate quality or provide resources to areas outside the most tightly contested jurisdictions

the impact of surplus schooling on earnings some additional findings this paper examines the impact of overeducation or surplus schooling on earnings overeducated workers are defined as those with educational attainments substantially above the mean for their specific occupations two models are estimated using data from the 1980 census though our models data and measure of overeducation are different from those used by rumberger 1987 our results are similar our results show that overeducated workers often earn less than their adequately educated and undereducated counterparts

i m too clever for this job a bivariate probit analysis on overeducation and job satisfaction in australia using data from the first wave of the household income and labour dynamics in australia data set this article establishes an empirical relationship between overeducation and workplace satisfaction for australian adult males in the labour force in a departure from much of the existing literature both univariate and bivariate probit models are used to account for potential unobserved heterogeneity we find that estimates in the univariate probit models are positively biased for three of the six measures of workplace satisfaction studied this suggests that consideration should be given to the use of bivariate models when studying the determinants of workplace satisfaction and overeducation results show although levels of satisfaction remain high that across all measures of workplace satisfaction overeducated workers are less satisfied compared to their nonovereducated counterparts this intimates that satisfaction levels should be viewed from a relative rather than an absolute perspective pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work aristotle 384bc 322bc

costly voting turnout and candidate valence we build a model of voluntary and costly expressive voting where the relative weight of ideology and valence issues over voting costs determines how people vote and if they actually turn out to vote in line with the conventional rational calculus approach the model predicts that the cost of voting depresses voter turnout against the conventional wisdom though high voting cost low turnout elections tend to have a larger share of voters for whom the common value signal on candidates valence matches their private value views thus raising the chances that high valence candidates are elected

warrant pricing is dilution a delusion the textbook treatment of warrants takes as a state variable the total equity value of the firm and makes explicit allowance for the effects of equity dilution when warrants are exercised warrant pricing however could just as well be based on the process the stock price follows this approach leads to a much simpler pricing model into which dilution does not enter and in fact a warrant has a value identical to that of the corresponding option moreover valuations based on stock prices are fully consistent with those obtained using the standard equity value approach in fact when the comparison is made in a consistent fashion the warrant prices obtained using the stock price method are identical to the results arising from the textbook method

economic theories of voter turnout i the voting paradox why would the rational individual bother to spend time and resources to become well informed go to the polls on the election day and maybe even wait in a queue why would a rational voter vote downs 1957 ii the paradox of indeterminacy if they vote why do they care who they vote for kirchgassner 1992 kirchgassner and pommerehne 1993 iii the paradox of ignorance to the extent that information is costly the rational voter must be ignorant about relevant aspects of his decision making downs 1957

rational choice theory and the paradox of not voting at least since downs s 1957 seminal work an economic theory of democracy rational choice theorists have appreciated the paradox of not voting in a large election the probability that an individual vote might change the election outcome is vanishingly small if each person only votes for the purpose of influencing the election outcome then even a small cost to vote like a minor schedule conflict or mildly bad weather should dissuade anyone from voting yet it seems that many people will put up with long lines daunting registration requirements and even the threat of physical violence or arrest in order to vote given the central place of voting within political economy the lack of an adequate rational choice model of large elections with costly voting presents an obvious problem for the most part theorists have bypassed the turnout problem either by eliminating voters as strategic actors or by assuming that the decision to vote is independent of other strategic choices the problem with the first approach is that the empirical literature on voting behavior provides considerable evidence of apparently strategic behavior in primary elections there is evidence that voters condition their vote choice on the viability of candidates abramson aldrich paolino and rohde 1992 in a seminal and comprehensive study cox 1997 shows that voting patterns and election outcomes are broadly consistent with patterns of behavior predicted by strategic voting models for example under plurality rule in which the candidate with the most votes wins the election

overeducation undereducation and the british labour market this paper addresses the issue of overeducation and undereducation using for the first time a british dataset which contains explicit information on the level of required education to enter a job across the generality of occupations three key issues within the overeducation literature are addressed first what determines the existence of over and undereducation and to what extent are over and undereducation substitutes for experience tenure and training second to what extent are over and undereducation temporary or permanent phenomena third what are the returns to over and undereducation and do certain stylized facts discovered for the us and a number of european countries hold for britain

changing roles of ability and education in u s intergenerational mobility using data on young adults from the 1979 and 1997 national longitudinal survey of youth we investigate the changing roles of ability and education in the transmission of economic status across generations we find that ability plays a substantially diminished role for the most recent cohort whereas education plays a much larger role the first finding results primarily from a smaller effect of children s ability on status the second from an increased correlation between parental status and educational attainment a replication of the analysis by gender reveals that the changes in the role of ability are largely driven by men whereas the changes in education s role are largely driven by women jel j62 i24

de centralization and voter turnout theory and evidence from german municipalities a vast academic literature illustrates that voter turnout is affected by the institutional design of elections e g compulsory voting electoral system postal or sunday voting in this article we exploit a simple downsian theoretical framework to argue that the institutional framework of public good provision and in particular the distribution of political and administrative competences across government levels likewise affects voters turnout decisions by influencing the expected net benefit of voting empirically we exploit the institutional variation across german municipalities to test this proposition and find supportive evidence