We develop a dynamic quantitative model of occupational choice and search frictions with multiple channels of intergenerational transmission (comparative advantage, social contacts and preferences), and use it to decompose the occupational persistence observed in the UK. In the model, workers who choose their father’s occupation find jobs faster and earn lower wages, which is consistent with patterns found in UK data. Quantitatively, parental networks account for 78% of total persistence. Shutting down parental networks or the transmission of preferences improves the allocation of workers and thus yields welfare gains, while removing the transmission of comparative advantage generates welfare losses.

I document that in the US most of prime-age unemployment is accounted for by relatively few people. I show that their lifetime labor market outcomes are compatible with a model featuring substantial unobserved heterogeneity across workers, in which agents learn workers' types from labor market histories.

Using linked employer-employee data from Brazil, we document a large gender pay gap due to women working at lower-paying employers with better amenities. To interpret these facts, we develop an equilibrium search model with endogenous firm pay, amenities, and employment. We provide a constructive proof of identification of all model parameters. The estimated model suggests that amenities are important for men and women, that compensating differentials explain half of the gender pay gap, and that there are significant output and welfare gains from eliminating gender differences. However, equal-treatment policies fail to achieve those gains.

What are the returns in terms of children's skills development to child allowance policies? Answering this question requires a theory of the tradeoffs faced by households, as well as a realistic technology of skills formation. I build a model of parental choices which embeds the technology of cognitive and noncognitive skills formation estimated by Cunha et al. (2010), featuring risky investment in children, time use tradeoffs, idiosyncratic income risk and borrowing constraints. Accounting for noncognitive skills implies higher effectiveness of parental investments, and therefore higher policy returns than previously estimated in the literature.

We study how the correlation of employment across generations affects the intergenerational persistence of earnings in a simple model of labor market transitions and human capital accumulation. Using UK data, we first document that individuals whose father is employed have a 8 percentage point higher probability of being employed, driven by a 50 percent higher job-finding probability. We do not find similar patterns for job-separation probabilities. Calibrating our model to match these patterns, we find that the estimated job-finding probability differentials can account for up to 7 percent of the intergenerational persistence of earnings.