We model the evolution of CEO quality in family firms. When heirs work toward a common goal alongside an older generation, Bayesian updating attributes success mostly to the older (proven) agent. Thus, heirs learn little about their own skill. This effect is strongest after the founder, implying that family firms tend to either die immediately or be relatively long-lived. More generally, we obtain an even/odd fluctuation in generational quality. Because uncertainty breeds caution, our analysis points to a conservative managerial style in family firms and emphasizes the importance of external screening mechanisms, especially for heirs following a very successful generation.

We investigate the role of skill complementarities in production and mobility across cities. The nature of the complementarities determines the equilibrium skill distribution across cities. With extreme-skill complementarity, the skill distribution has thicker tails in large cities; with top-skill complementarity, there is first-order stochastic dominance. Using wage and housing price data, we find robust evidence of thick tails in large cities: large cities disproportionately attract both high- and low-skilled workers, while average skills are constant across city size. This pattern of spatial sorting is consistent with extreme-skill complementarity, where the productivity of high-skilled workers and of the providers of low-skilled services are mutually enhanced.