This paper shows that cognitive skills can account for growth differences within the OECD, whereas a range of economic institutions and quantitative measures of tertiary education cannot. Under the growth model estimates and plausible projection parameters, school improvements falling within currently observed performance levels yield very large gains. The present value of OECD aggregate gains...

International comparisons of intergenerational mobility must take into account differences in politico-economic institutions, according to this study. The intergenerational elasticity of income is considered one of the best measures of the degree to which a society gives equal opportunity to its members. While much research has been devoted to measuring this reduced-form parameter, less is...

This European study presents an innovative approach to short-term forecasts of unemployment using data on Google search words, which allows them to predict unemployment trends as early as one month before the official figures are released by the Federal Employment Agency. In times of crisis, there is a particularly strong demand for early and reliable...

Going to a single-sex school makes teenage girls more competitive than if they attend a co-educational school, a study of adolescent behaviour has found. Using a controlled experiment, we examine the role of nurture in explaining the stylized fact that women shy away from competition. Our subjects (students just under 15 years of age) attend...

Hielke Buddelmeyer and Roger Wilkins describe the dynamics of smoking behaviour in Australia, using HILDA data to track individuals’ smoking behaviour over the period 2001 to 2003, during which time smoking ban initiatives in Queensland, Victoria and the Northern Territory came into effect. They exploit this variation over time and across states to assess the...