TY - JOUR T1 - On the Production of Skills and the Birth-Order Effect JF - Journal of Human Resources JO - J Hum Resour SP - 699 LP - 726 DO - 10.3368/jhr.51.3.0913-5920R VL - 51 IS - 3 AU - Ronni Pavan Y1 - 2016/08/01 UR - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/51/3/699.abstract N2 - First-born children tend to outperform their younger siblings on measures such as cognitive exams, wages, educational attainment, and employment. Using a framework similar to Cunha and Heckman (2008) and Cunha, Heckman, and Schennach (2010), this paper finds that differences in parents’ investments across siblings can account for more than one-half of the gap in cognitive skills among siblings. The study’s framework accommodates for endogeneity in parents’ investments, measurement error, missing observations, and dynamic impacts of parental investments. ER -