Search Results
Journal Article
Effects of personal and school characteristics on estimates of the return to education
What is the economic return to attending college? The earnings gap between college and high school graduates is large, but college and high school graduates differ in many ways besides education. This article finds that differences in family background and ability explain about one fourth of the gap.
Conference Paper
Educating managers and employees
Working Paper
Learning by doing and the value of optimal experimentation
Research on learning-by-doing has typically been restricted to cases where estimation and control can be treated separately. Recent work has provided convergence results for more general learning problems where experimentation is an important aspect of optimal control. However the associated optimal policy cannot be derived analytically because Bayesian learning introduces a nonlinearity in the dynamic programming problem. This paper characterizes the optimal policy numerically and shows that it incorporates a substantial degree of experimentation. Dynamic simulations indicate that optimal ...
Journal Article
Worker skills must expand to meet long-term demands
Journal Article
Investing in the front line or the new art of cutting metal
Journal Article
From public assistance to self-sufficiency: the role for the microenterprise strategy
Lisa Servon of the Bloustein School of Planning & Public Policy at Rutgers University details research on the benefits of microenterprise training for those making the transition off of public assistance. The number of microenterprise programs in the United States has grown substantially over the past decade. Policymakers at all levels of government are viewing microenterprise development as a potential silver bullet for solving problems with the welfare system. Professor Servon argues that while microenterprise training does provide former public assistance recipients with practical skills, ...
Journal Article
Productivity, computerization, and skill change
Until recently, most studies examining the effect of computerization on productivity have shown little evidence of a payoff to computer investment in terms of productivity growth. Most of these studies have focused on the connection between information technology (IT) or information and communications technology (ICT) and productivity, but few have examined the linkages between IT and broader indicators of structural change. This article helps fill that gap. ; The article concentrates on the relation of skills, education, and computerization to productivity growth and other indicators of ...
Journal Article
Temps have a permanent place in the workforce
Journal Article
Getting back on your feet
Are government job training programs helpful? Are they even necessary?