Essays on human capital & econometric methods

Abstract: This doctoral thesis in Economics consists of four self-contained chapters.“Did the apple fall far from the tree?” examines the interaction of uncertain-ty and learning about ability with family background in the determination of human capital decisions.“Careers of the Extremely Intelligent” studies the career outcomes of men at the high end of the distribution of cognitive skill.“A Simplified Klein-Spady Estimator for Binary Choice Models” proposes a modified version of the classic Klein-Spady semiparametric estimator, with improved stability and small-sample performance.“Crowdsourcing Hypothesis Tests” analyzes the results of a large scale meta-analytic replication experiment, in an effort to better understand how design choices shape research results.