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Title: Estimating the Technology of Cognitive and Noncognitive Skill Formation
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Cunha, Flavio
Heckman, James J.
Schennach, Susanne
Estimating the Technology of Cognitive and Noncognitive Skill Formation
Econometrica 78,3 (1 May 2010): 883–931.
Also: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2885826/
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Blackwell Publishing, Inc. => Wiley Online
Keyword(s): Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB); Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Life Cycle Research; Motor and Social Development (MSD); Parental Influences; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT); Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) (see Self-Esteem); Rotter Scale (see Locus of Control); Skill Depreciation; Skill Formation; Temperament

This paper formulates and estimates multistage production functions for child cognitive and noncognitive skills. Output is determined by parental environments and investments at different stages of childhood. We estimate the elasticity of substitution between investments in one period and stocks of skills in that period to assess the benefits of early investment in children compared to later remediation. We establish nonparametric identification of a general class of nonlinear factor models. A by-product of our approach is a framework for evaluating childhood interventions that does not rely on arbitrarily scaled test scores as outputs and recognizes the differential effects of skills in different tasks. Using the estimated technology, we determine optimal targeting of interventions to children with different parental and personal birth endowments. Substitutability decreases in later stages of the life cycle for the production of cognitive skills. It increases in later stages of the life cycle for the production of noncognitive skills. This finding has important implications for the design of policies that target the disadvantaged. For some configurations of disadvantage and outcomes, it is optimal to invest relatively more in the later stages of childhood.
Bibliography Citation
Cunha, Flavio, James J. Heckman and Susanne Schennach. "Estimating the Technology of Cognitive and Noncognitive Skill Formation." Econometrica 78,3 (1 May 2010): 883–931. A.