Why has the college wage premium risen rapidly in the United States since the 1980s, but not in European economies such as Germany? We argue that differences in employment protection can account for much of the gap. We develop a model in which firms and workers make relationship-specific...

Using the 2010 and 2014 data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), this paper analyzes the effect of human capital on the gender earnings gap, both within cohorts and across cohorts using regression, Oaxaca-Blinder, and Juhn-Murphy-Pierce decomposition analyses. On the one hand, over the...

We examine the impact of a large, randomized Girls' Education Challenge (GEC) project in rural Zimbabwe. The multifaceted project initially provided information about girls' rights and education barriers to girls, parents, teachers, and others. Later, the project introduced a learn-to-read...

We conduct an empirical simulation exercise that gauges the plausible impact of increased rates of college attainment on a variety of measures of income inequality and economic insecurity. Using two different methodological approaches-a distributional approach and a causal parameter approach-we...

This study focuses on estimating the returns to education in non-farm self-employed businesses in the Indian context, using nationwide individual- and household-level data provided by the India Human Development Survey for the year 2011/12. Given that different studies have used different types...

In the research on peer effects, unweighted mean classroom performance is the predominant measure used in the estimation of education production functions. In this paper, based on the sociological concept of homophily, I introduce social network matrices that correspond to a weighting scheme for...

A limited number of studies have investigated the impacts of education on non-cognitive skills, yet they offer mixed results. A few studies suggest no impact, but others report positive impacts of education on non-cognitive skills. In this paper, we apply the elimination of Social Security...

China experienced a near 5-fold increase in annual Higher Education (HE) enrolment in the decade starting in 1999. Using the China Household Finance Survey, we show that the expansion has exacerbated the large pre-existing urban-rural gap in educational attainment underpinned by the hukou...

Going to university is a very good investment for most students. Over their working lives, men will be £130,000 better off on average by going to university after taxes, student loan repayments and foregone earnings are taken into account. For women, this figure is £100,000. (These and other...

In recent years, many countries have experienced a significant expansion of higher education enrolment. There is a particular interest among policy makers for further growth in STEM subjects, which could lead to larger classes in these fields. This study estimates the effect of class size on...

This paper examines the case for randomized controlled trials in economics. I revisit my previous paper "Randomization and Social Policy Evaluation" and update its message. I present a brief summary of the history of randomization in economics. I identify two waves of enthusiasm for the method...

This paper shows that returns to education are not enough to capture all the returns to human capital. Using longitudinal data of all college graduates in Colombia, we estimate labor market returns to postsecondary degrees and to various skillsincluding literacy, numeracy, foreign language,...

The main goal of this paper is to document and analyze the long-term evolution of inequality of opportunity (IOp) in the four largest European economies (France, Germany, Great Britain and Italy). Relative IOp represents an important portion of total income inequality, with values ranging from...

Franziska Bernadette Hampf prepared this study while she was working at the ifo Center for the Economics of Education. The study was completed in September 2019 and accepted as doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It consists of four distinct empirical...

EdTech which includes online education, computer assisted learning (CAL), and remote instruction was expanding rapidly even before the current full-scale substitution for in-person learning at all levels of education around the world because of the coronavirus pandemic. Studies of CAL...

We study the long-term effects of a randomized intervention targeting children's socio-emotional skills. The classroom-based intervention for primary school children has positive impacts that persist for over a decade. Treated children become more likely to complete academic high school and...

EdTech which includes online education, computer assisted learning (CAL), and remote instruction was expanding rapidly even before the current full-scale substitution for in-person learning at all levels of education around the world because of the coronavirus pandemic. Studies of CAL...

Based on a detailed model of the German tax-benefit system, this paper simulates private and fiscal returns to education for college graduates and college dropouts. Completing a five-year college degree is found to be associated with an internal rate of return (IRR) of 14.2% for gross earnings,...

We study the long-term effects of a randomized intervention targeting children’s socio-emotional skills. The classroom-based intervention for primary school children has positive impacts that persist for over a decade. Treated children become more likely to complete academic high school and...

We find robust evidence that cohorts of graduates who enter college during worse economic times earn higher average wages than those who enter during better times. This difference is not explained by differences in economic conditions at the time of college graduation, changes in field of study...

We examine changes in inequality in socio-emotional skills very early in life in two British cohorts born 30 years apart. We construct comparable scales using two validated instruments for the measurement of child behaviour and identify two dimensions of socio-emotional skills: 'internalising'...

This paper studies the impact of labor market conditions during the education-to-work transition on workers' long-term skill development. Using representative survey data on measures of work-relevant cognitive skills for adults from 19 countries, I document four main findings: i) cohorts of...

In spite of large structural expansions in higher education in Chile and Peru during the 1980s and 1990s, and a favourable growth context, levels of inequality are still very high in both countries and inequities in higher education persist. This paper investigates the role that higher education...

This paper develops a dynamic model of schooling and occupational choices that incorporates personality traits, as measured by the "big five" traits. The model is estimated using the HILDA dataset from Australia. Personality traits are found to play an important role in explaining education and...

As China's firms upgrade their position in the quality ladder, vocational education may become more important. In this paper, we study returns to secondary vocational education in China paying attention to individual heterogeneity. We use instrumental variables based on geographical and...

We study the long-term effects of a randomized intervention targeting children's socio-emotional skills. The classroom-based intervention for primary school children has positive impacts that persist for over a decade. Treated children become more likely to complete academic high school and...

We propose a simple theory of under- and over-employment. Individuals of high type can perform both skilled and unskilled jobs, but only a fraction of low-type workers can perform skilled jobs. People have different non-pecuniary values over these jobs, akin to a Roy model. We calibrate two...

In recent years, many countries have experienced a significant expansion of higher education enrolment. There is a particular interest among policy makers for further growth in STEM subjects, which could lead to larger classes in these fields. This study estimates the effect of class size on...

This paper asks to what extent host language proficiency can insure immigrants against the risk of ending up in mismatched jobs. Using the 2003-2016 waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA), the paper discriminates between three forms of mismatch,...

In large parts of the world, income inequality has been rising in recent decades. Other regions have experienced declining trends in income inequality. This raises the question of which mechanisms underlie contrasting observed trends in income inequality around the globe. To address this...

We investigate the major choice of college graduates where we make choice dependent on expected initial wages and expected wage growth per major. We build a model that allows us to estimate these factors semiparametrically and that corrects for selection bias. We estimate the model on the...

In this paper, we identify female long-term wage returns to college education using the educational expansion between 1960-1990 inWest Germany as exogenous variation for college enrollment. We estimate marginal treatment effects to learn about the underlying behavioral structure of women who...

This paper examines the relationship between countries' bilateral trade with the United States that is not due to gravity (non-gravity trade) and the distribution of income within countries. In countries where only a small share of the population are educated, an increase in non-gravity trade is...

Why has the college wage premium risen rapidly in the United States since the 1980s, but not in European economies such as Germany? We argue that differences in employment protection can account for much of the gap. We develop a model in which firms and workers make relationship-specific...

Working memory capacity is thought to play an important role for a wide range of cognitive and noncognitive skills such as fluid intelligence, math, reading, the inhibition of pre-potent impulses or more general self-regulation abilities. Because these abilities substantially affect individuals'...

We estimate a structural dynamic Roy model of education, labor supply and earnings on the 1979 and 1997 cohorts of males taken from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) and evaluate to what extent changes in education and labor supply decisions across cohorts have been explained by...

This paper examines whether additional time in elementary and secondary school affects economic well-being in adulthood. This paper explores a large-scale reform that increased the Chilean school day by 30 percent between 1997 and 2010, with access to longer school days varying by cohort and...