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...

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...

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....

Human capital is no doubt one of the most important factors for future economic growth and well-being. However, human capital is also prone to becoming obsolete over time. Skills that have been acquired at one point in time may perfectly match the skill requirements at that time but may become...

Human capital is no doubt one of the most important factors for future economic growth and well-being. However, human capital is also prone to becoming obsolete over time. Skills that have been acquired at one point in time may perfectly match the skill requirements at that time but may become...

This paper investigates the effect of financial incentives on student performance and analyzes for the first time how the incentive effect in education is moderated by students’ risk and time preferences. To examine this interaction we use a natural experiment that we combine with data from...

Companies face competitive advantages or disadvantages depending on a country’s national institutional setting. The question is whether and how companies with highly similar product markets and technologies are able to stay competitive if they are located in disadvantaged national...

This paper examines whether high quality, curriculum-based training at the workplace makes firms more innovative. Our dependent variable innovativeness is operationalized with four different measures: general innovation, product innovation, process innovation and patent applications. As...