TY - JOUR T1 - On The Production of Skills and the Birth Order Effect JF - Journal of Human Resources JO - J Hum Resour DO - 10.3368/jhr.51.3.0913-5920R AU - Ronni Pavan Y1 - 2015/11/30 UR - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2015/11/20/jhr.51.3.0913-5920R.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 -