Drawing on an unusually large set of employer-employee data, we examine how workers’ pay is related to the educational composition within their occupational group. We find that educational composition as measured by the educational diversity and the educational level of an occupational group...

In this paper we analyze the training curricula of VET (vocational education and training) occupations using detailed data on learned skills from official trainings regulations. We explore how differences in the skill bundles of occupational curricula can be measured and how such differences...

This paper examines how workers' earnings change after involuntary job separations depending on the workers' acquired IT skills and the specificity of their occupational training. We categorize workers' occupational skill bundles along two independent dimensions. First, we distinguish between...

This paper examines how workers' earnings change after involuntary job separations depending on the workers' acquired IT skills and the specificity of their occupational training. We categorize workers' occupational skill bundles along two independent dimensions. First, we distinguish between...

We examine how different student employment statuses during tertiary education affect short-term and medium-term labor market returns. We focus on differences between students studying full-time and students studying and working part-time, i.e., ‘earning while learning’. In addition, we...

This study presents evidence of heterogeneous returns to education over the wage distribution. The authors use instrumental variable quantile regression and data from the Swiss Labor Force Survey to identify the causal link between education and wages at dierent quantiles of the conditional...

This study investigates the impact of finishing versus dropping out of college on self-esteem. Using data spanning three decades from the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we find that dropping out of a four-year college significantly decreases self-esteem compared to graduating. In...

This paper examines whether individuals who become either entrepreneurs or employees follow systematically different educational paths to a given educational level. Following Lazear’s jack-of-all-trades theory, we expect that entrepreneurs aim at a balanced set of different skills (academic or...

The two choices that students in many Western European countries must make during their educational career are the type of education (vocational vs. academic) and the subject area (the specific field of education). However, most studies on the effect of education on earnings consider only one of...

Using the Swiss Graduate Survey, we study how the type of tertiary education an individual chooses (i.e., vocational or academic) influences career entry and labor market success after graduation. Our results show that vocational graduates face less risky career entry than academic graduates....