This volume contains essays by or about Jacob Mincer who is a founding father of modern empirical labor economics. This personal collection not only examines Mincer’s research, it also assesses the impact of his work on the careers of several important economists and includes portions of Mincer’s correspondence with those scholars. Contributors to this volume include Gary Becker and James Heckman, each of whom is a Nobel Laureate and former Mincer collaborator.

The original book published with the IZA, this work presents and analyzes the work of one of the most important economists of the 20th century - Jacob Mincer. Mincer's work has had a lasting influence on contemporary labor economics in both theoretical and methodological terms. Mincer played a central role in shaping contemporary labor economics, not the least by largely determining its research agenda. His work in the 1960s and 70s on the determinants of individual earnings, notably human capital, and on labor force supply, particularly female participation, have had an enormous impact on the way others have approached labor economics. This book presents a systematic analysis of his extensive published work, emphasising its continuity as a lifetime research program that has made a lasting influence on modern labor economics.

Analyzes the distribution of worker earnings across workers and over the working age as consequences of differential investments in human capital. The study also develops the human capital earnings function, an econometric tool for assessing rates of return and other investment parameters.

'The books should. . . . be bought by every university library. The research reported here is important, the exposition is lucid, the sequencing of chapters is sensible and the retrospective aspect of the volumes provides a fascinating insight into the working methods of one of the great economists of our time.' - Geraint Johnes, International Journal of Manpower Studies in Human Capital, the first volume of Jacob Mincer's essays to be published in this series, assesses the impact of education and job training on wage growth. It offers an authoritative study of the effects of human capital investments on labor turnover and the impact of technological change on human capital formation.

Earnings over the Lifecycle: The Mincer Earnings Function and Its Applications focuses on the underlying economics behind the Mincer earnings function and its robustness and relevance to policy applications.

Marriage and the Economy explores how marriage influences the monetized economy as well as the household economy. Marriage institutions are to the household economy what business institutions are to the monetized economy, and marital status is clearly related to the household economy. Marriage also influences the economy as conventionally measured via its impact on labor supply, workers' productivity, savings, consumption, and government programs such as welfare programs and social security. The macro-economic analyses presented here are based on the micro-economic foundations of cost/benefit analysis, game theory, and market analysis. Micro-economic analysis of marriage, divorce, and behavior within marriages are investigated by a number of specialists in various areas of economics. Western values and laws have been very successful at transforming the way the world does business, but its success at maintaining individual commitments to family values is less impressive. -- from publisher description.