Labor Market Returns and the Evolution of Cognitive Skills: Theory and Evidence

We thank Dan Benjamin, Ernesto Dal Bó, Peter Fredriksson, Larry Katz, Pete Klenow, Erik Lindqvist, Neil Mehrotra, Kevin M. Murphy, Björn Öckert, Jakob Pietschnig, Eka Roivainen, Andrei Shleifer, David Strömberg, Jonas Vlachos, and seminar participants at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, BI Norwegian Business School, CIDE, Stockholm University, University of Mannheim, Vanderbilt University, VATT Institute for Economic Research, Bocconi University, Collegio Carlo Alberto, ESE Rotterdam, and Tel Aviv University for helpful comments and exchanges. We thank our dedicated research assistants for their contributions to this project. We acknowledge support from the Jan Wallander and Tom Hedelius Foundation (Grant P2015-0095:1), and from the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Wealth and Income Inequality Project, the Eastman Professorship, and the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University. The study is in part based on data from the research infrastructure UGU at the University of Gothenburg. UGU is funded by Swedish Research Council (dnr. 2017-00628) and University of Gothenburg. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding or data sources. Translations from Swedish to English are our own, with assistance from Google Translate. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

• August 4, 2021