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This paper examines the relationship between individuals' skills and labor market outcomes for the working-age population of Colombia's urban areas. Using a 2012 unique household survey, the paper finds that cognitive skills (aptitudes to perform mental tasks such as comprehension or reasoning) and socio-emotional skills (personality traits and behaviors) matter for favorable labor market outcomes in the Colombian context, although they have distinct roles. Cognitive skills are greatly associated with higher earnings and holding a formal job or a high-qualified occupation. By contrast, socio-emotional skills appear to have little direct influence on these outcomes, but play a stronger role in labor market participation. Both types of skills, especially cognitive skills, are largely associated with pursuing tertiary education. The analysis applies standard econometric techniques as a benchmark and structural estimations to correct for the measurement error of skill constructs.

Cognitive skills --- Education --- Education for all --- Educational sciences --- Effective schools & teachers --- Labor market outcomes --- Labor markets --- Latent skills --- Personality traits --- Primary education --- Returns to skills --- Social protections and labor --- Socio-emotional skills --- Unobserved heterogeneity

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Aspirations have become a common theme in empirical economics studies, but there is no unified understanding of the range of outcomes they influence, the factors that shape them, and how to measure them. This paper surveys this growing literature. The paper argues that there is compelling evidence to consider aspirations as a useful lens to analyze human behavior and development outcomes, at the individual and aggregate levels, in poorer and richer countries. The empirical evidence aligns with the theory that high aspirations can lead individuals to achieve better educational, labor market, and other outcomes and can contribute to making countries more equal and prosperous. The empirical evidence also confirms that the mix of social and circumstantial factors shaping aspirations tends to hinder the aspirations of the disadvantaged - such asthe poor, immigrants, and women - and can contribute tovicious circles of poverty, high inequality, low social mobility, and low growth. However, high aspirations should not be considered as an end in themselves as they can backfire, with deleterious effects, if unmatched with opportunities. Further, the paper argues that definitional and measurement issues can affect the understanding of the topic and that studies should more explicitly describe their measures of aspirations to ensure that divergent underlying concepts are not mistaken.

Ambition. --- Social surveys.