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Title: The Ben-Porath Model and Age-Wage Profiles

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2012

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Abstract: This paper asks how far one can go towards identifying the parameters of the Ben-Porath model without imposing strong assumptions about cohort endowments and skill prices. The main finding is that the Ben-Porath model generates nearly identical age wage profiles for a wide range of two key parameters: the curvature of the human capital technology and the average growth rate of skill prices. In contrast to a recent literature which argues that the Ben-Porath technology is nearly linear, I show that the model closely fits observed age wage profiles, but only for curvature parameters that are below 0.8. I explore how this finding changes a number of empirical implications that have been derived from the model.

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Authors: Hendricks, Lutz

Publisher: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Data Collections: IPUMS USA, IPUMS CPS

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Methodology and Data Collection

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