In recent years, a growing literature has claimed that there is a strong and consistent association between the presence of historic missionary societies outside Europe and positive long-term socio-economic outcomes. Yet, most of these studies fail to specify whether this finding is the result of missionary investment in human capital or of local actors stepping up their educational efforts in reaction to missionary activities. This article uses the example of Protestant missionary activity in Ottoman Turkey to separate these two mechanisms. The Ottoman state and the Armenian population responded to missionary incursions by modernizing and expanding their educational efforts. However, after the foundation of the Republic and of modern Turkey, most of the missionary schools were closed and the Armenian population was dramatically reduced. Using the blockage of direct effects, this study confirms the role that indirect effects or emulation has played in Ottoman Turkey. Results show that places with historically heightened competition between missionary schools and native educational institutions are more likely to have a higher income, as measured by night-time light density.

The careers of male lawyers are radically altered by their experiences in the formation of families. These understudied male experiences fuel income differences, creating a highly hierarchical profession focused around a male mystique of “living large.” This study traces these processes across a 20-year longitudinal study of Toronto lawyers. We argue that time with corporate clients is a very specialized investment that is rewarded with partnership and earnings and that, among men, bears an unexpectedly unique relationship to having children, and that this specialized investment and its relationship to family are more culturally driven than biologically derived.

Les travailleurs bénéficient de performances différentes sur le marché du travail en fonction de leur âge : le taux d'emploi exhibe une trajectoire en cloche en fonction de l'âge, tandis que le taux de chômage est continuellement décroissant. Au cours des dernières décennies, le taux de chômage a augmenté pour toutes les catégories d'âge, mais essentiellement pour les plus jeunes, tandis que les taux d'emploi et de participation ont essentiellement diminué pour les plus jeunes et les plus âgés. Nous construisons dans cet article un modèle d'appariement à la Pissarides (1990) apte à rendre compte de ces phénomènes.

This paper examines the dynamics of the skill supply and its incidence on economic growth in the presence of education policies. When there are indivisibilities in the financing of human capital, small differences in the initial distribution of skills may greatly affect the stationary distribution: the economy may end up in a “low skill trap”, or in a high skill equilibrium. The model implies that for some ranges of initial distributions there will be intergenerational immobility. Finally, cross-country differences in long-term macroeconomic adjustment to education policies may be attributed, among other factors, to the existence of a congestion effect in the education system.

Nous présentons dans cet article un modèle à générations imbriquées avec capital humain qui permet de rendre compte de la diversité des systèmes publics de retraite par répartition. Notamment, ce modèle intègre la possibilité que les droits à pension d’une personne soient calculés soit de manière forfaitaire soit en fonction de l’historique de ses salaires et de la durée de sa période salariale. Dans ce dernier cas, de loin le plus rencontré concrètement, si la durée minimum légale de cotisation donnant droit à une pension à taux plein n’est pas trop élevée, le système de retraite peut être favorable à la croissance économique en incitant les agents à investir davantage en capital humain. Ce mode de calcul des droits à pension peut donc s’avérer économiquement profitable et dominer en tout cas le mode de calcul alternatif basé sur le versement d’une pension forfaitaire. Nous déduions également les conséquences de ce mode de calcul sur les ajustements à opérer face à différents types de structure démographique.

This paper sets up a simple two-country overlapping generations model to explore the interplay between education, taxation, and labour mobility and to assess the impact of education policies on human capital formation and long-run welfare in both the sending and the receiving country. It emphasises the role of diminishing returns with respect to public spending on education in the welfare consequences of labour mobility. Emigration can improve the long-run welfare of the sending country when the elasticity of the education technology is low. Immigration augments the long-run level of human capital in the receiving country but can result in a level of long-run welfare lower than autarky.