The Technology of Skill Formation

By Flávio Cunha, James J. Heckman. Social Science Research Network, 2007

3,084 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper develops a model of skill formation that explains a variety of findings established in the child development and child intervention literatures. At its core is a technology that is stage-specific and that features self productivity, dynamic complementarity and skill multipliers. Lessons are drawn for the design of new policies to alleviate the consequences of the accident of birth that is a major source of human inequality.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/60c490b3d6c1f80b963f5fdff31235745bfefee6

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Citations in the corpus

Born to Lead? The Effect of Birth Order on Noncognitive Abilities (2017, neutral): “Interestingly, parents are less 5 This literature has focused on the acquisition of skills in childhood (Cunha et al., 2006; Cunha & Heckman, 2007, 2008; Fredriksson, Öckert, & Oosterbeek 2013) and adolescence (Grönqvist & Lindqvist, 2016) or used data on twins or adoptees to separate nature and nur”
Cognitive skills, non-cognitive skills, and family background: evidence from sibling correlations (2016, neutral): “Cunha and Heckman (2007) present a production function for this aspect of accumulated human capital.”
Environment, Health, and Human Capital (2013, neutral): “Many health shocks can affect human capital and productivity, both in the short run (Strauss and Thomas 1998; Currie and Stabile 2006) and the long run (Cunha and Heckman 2007; Currie and Hyson 1999).”
Non-Cognitive Skills and Personality Traits: Labour Market Relevance and Their Development in Education & Training Systems (2011, background): “…in higher cognitive achievement could have been the dynamic process of skill formation described by Heckman and co-authors (see for example Cunha and Heckman 2007): increasing non cognitive skills during adolescence cannot compensate for cognitive deficits that have been accumulated since…”
Childhood Roots of Financial Literacy (2015, background): “Cunha and Heckman (2007) develop a theoretical model that shows the link between family background, i.e. parents’ education, and cognitive ability as well as later life outcomes.”
2017-03 Early and Late Human Capital Investments, Borrowing Constraints, and the Family (2012, neutral): “This paper is most closely related to Cunha and Heckman (2007) and Cunha (2013).”