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The discrimination literature treats outcomes as relative. But does a differential arise because agents discriminate against others – exophobia – or because they favour their own kind – endophilia? Using a field experiment that assigned graders randomly to students’ examinations that did/did not contain names, we find favouritism but no discrimination by nationality nor by gender. We are able to identify these preferences under a wide range of behavioural scenarios regarding the graders. That endophilia dominates exophobia alters how we should measure discriminatory wage differentials and should inform the formulation of anti-discrimination policy. This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in The Economic Journal following peer review. The version of record Feld. J, Salamanca, N., & Hamermesh, D. S. (2016). Endophilia or Exophobia: beyond discrimination. The Economic Journal, 126(594), 1503-1527 is available online at: http://doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12289

This paper analyses the career progression of skilled and unskilled workers with a focus on how careers are affected by economic downturns and whether formal skills, acquired early on, can shield workers from the effect of recessions. Using detailed administrative data for Germany for numerous birth cohorts across different regions, we follow workers from labour market entry onwards and estimate a dynamic life-cycle model of vocational training choice, labour supply, and wage progression. Most particularly, our model allows for labour market frictions that vary by skill group and over the business cycle. We find that sources of wage growth differ: learning-by-doing is an important component for unskilled workers early on in their careers, while job mobility is important for workers who acquire skills in an apprenticeship scheme before labour market entry. Likewise, economic downturns affect skill groups through very different channels: unskilled workers lose out from a decline in productivity and human capital, whereas skilled individuals suffer mainly from lack of mobility.

We analyse full-time monthly wages of employees with parents born in Sweden and of childhood immigrants who arrived before the end of compulsory school-age. We use a detailed disaggregation of background countries, which shows considerable heterogeneity, in overeducation, in returns to education and in birth-country coefficients, unexplained by wage models. Both the non-European childhood immigrants and of those from Southern Europe suffer a wage disadvantage relative to natives, men to a larger extent than women. Returns to education are generally lower for non-European childhood immigrants than for natives. Comparison with workers, who immigrated as adults, shows that the childhood immigrants of most nationalities run lower risk of being overeducated and have a smaller wage disadvantage. The child/adult immigrant difference is larger, the larger the disadvantage of the adult immigrants from a country of origin. But for male childhood immigrants from some of the labour transmitter countries, the risk of overeducation is larger than it is for adult immigrants and the difference in adjusted wages between childhood immigrants and adult immigrants also tends to be smaller than for other countries of origin.

Previous research does not teach us much about the role of music for skill development. Learning a musical instrument during childhood may affect educational opportunities by improving cognitive skills, teaching non-cognitive skills or sending positive signals to school teachers. Our study is the first to examine these channels with data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). In addition to assessing the duration and intensity of music practice during childhood, the SOEP contains detailed information on parents, which may determine both the decision to follow music lessons and educational outcomes: socio-economic background, personality, involvement in the child's school success and taste for the arts. Using regression-adjusted propensity score matching, we test to which extent these characteristics explain outcome differences between children who have learned a musical instrument for at least 9 years and those who did not. Even after including all of the control variables, cognitive skills of adolescents who followed music lessons during childhood are 0.27 standard deviations above those of their peers. Moreover, these children have better school marks and are more conscientious, agreeable and ambitious. Some of the outcome differences are even larger among children who come from families with lower socio-economic status. The causal effect of learning a musical instrument might be smaller than our estimates due to the potential influence of unobserved characteristics. However, we argue that our strict choice of treatment and control variables may actually lead us to underestimate the true causal effect of learning a musical instrument.

Osnabrück : Landkreis Osnabrück 2013, 187 S., Mit dem Bildungsbericht 2013 liegt bereits die zweite datenbasierte Bestandsaufnahme der Bildung im Landkreis Osnabrück vor. Neben der Fortschreibung von Zeitreihen aus dem ersten Bericht, liefert der Bericht erstmals Informationen über das Hochschulwesen der Region und eine Bestandsaufnahme der non-formalen Bildung. Eine Untersuchung zu den Ganztagsangeboten in den Schulen des Kreisgebietes legt einen besonderen Schwerpunkt. (DIPF/Orig.)

Empirische Untersuchungen zeigen, dass Weiterbildung in der zweiten Lebenshälfte zu Einkommensvorteilen für Arbeitnehmer gegenüber Personen ohne Weiterbildungsteilnahme führen kann. Auch vergleichsweise lange Weiterbildungsmaßnahmen lohnen sich noch in der zweiten Lebenshälfte, beispielsweise eine Aufstiegsfortbildung zum Meister oder Techniker. Neben höheren Arbeitseinkommen weisen Personen mit einer Weiterbildungsbeteiligung ein größeres Maß an Zufriedenheit, ein höheres Sicherheitsempfinden und einen besseren Gesundheitszustand auf. Darüber hinaus kann Weiterbildung auch positive Effekte für Unternehmen haben. Für diese sind vor allem solche Weiterbildungsmaßnahmen erfolgreich, in denen sich ältere Arbeitnehmer neue Kenntnisse und Fähigkeiten eher informell aneignen und diese unmittelbar am Arbeitsplatz anwenden können. Es zeigt sich, dass das Bild von älteren Arbeitnehmern in den Unternehmen positiver ist als in der Öffentlichkeit häufig angenommen. Aus einer gesamtgesellschaftlichen Perspektive kann Weiterbildung schließlich dazu dienen, die Beschäftigungsfähigkeit Älterer zu erhöhen und deren Arbeitslosigkeitsrisiko zu senken. Damit kann Weiterbildung dazu beitragen, dass ältere Arbeitnehmer dem Arbeitsmarkt länger zur Verfügung stehen. Somit können die negativen Auswirkungen des demografischen Wandels verringert werden. Empirical studies have shown that those who participate in further training later in life can earn more than those who do not. Even comparatively long training courses, such as those leading to a qualification as master craftsman or technician, are found to pay off in later life. In addition to higher job earnings, those who undergo further training manifest a higher level of satisfaction, a greater sense of security and a better state of health. Moreover, continuing education can have positive effects for companies. For firms, on-the-job training schemes that enable older employees to acquire new knowledge and skills less formally, and to apply them immediately at the workplace, have proved particularly successful. It turns out that companies have a more positive image of older employees than is often assumed by the public. Finally, from the point of view of society as a whole, adding to their skills can serve to raise the employability of older workers and lower their risk of unemployment. In this way, further training can contribute to keeping older workers available to the labour market longer and thus reducing the negative effects of demographic change.

Proposition 209 banned the use of racial preferences in admissions at public colleges in California. We analyze unique data for all applicants and enrollees within the University of California (UC) system before and after Prop 209. After Prop 209, minority graduation rates increased by 4.35 percentage points. We present evidence that certain institutions are better at graduating more-prepared students while other institutions are better at graduating less-prepared students and that these matching effects are particularly important for the bottom tail of the qualification distribution. We find that Prop 209 led to a more efficient sorting of minority students, explaining 18% of the graduation rate increase in our preferred specification. Further, there appears to have been behavioral responses to Prop 209, by universities and/or students, that explain between 23% and 64% of the graduation rate increase. JEL codes I28; J15

Der Beitrag verfolgt die These, dass sich die politische Rationalität der Exzellenz im Hochschulsystem insbesondere deshalb durchsetzen kann, weil sie in spezifischer Weise egalitär ist. Anhand der Problematisierungen, Zielsetzungen und Plausibilisierungsstrategien von wissenschaftssoziologischen Schriften, Managementliteratur und hochschul- und bildungspolitischen Konzepten wird dabei die spezifische Rationalität des Governing by Excellence als Bestandteil einer zeitgenössischen Gouvernementalität des Bildungssystems herauspräpariert. Dabei wird eine genealogische Perspektive verfolgt, um 'unter der scheinbaren Einheit eines Merkmals oder Begriffs', wie ihn Exzellenz innerhalb des hochschulpolitischen Diskurses darstellt, 'die vielfältigen Ereignisse ausfindig zu machen, durch die (gegen die) sie sich gebildet haben' (Foucault 2009: 186f.). Um zu zeigen, wie sich die exzellenzorientierten politischen Programme entwickeln konnten, werden anhand einiger genealogischer Tiefbohrungen zu den Konzepten von Potential, Leistung und Wettbewerb mit der Karriere des zeitgenössischen Exzellenzdiskurses zugleich wesentliche Konturen dieser politischen Rationalität aufgezeigt. (HoF/Text übernommen)

Empirical evidence suggests that relative age, which is determined by date of birth and the school entry cutoff date, has a causal effect on track choice. Using a sample of male labor market entrants drawn from Austrian register data, I analyze whether the initial assignment to different school tracks has persistent effects on educational attainment and earnings in the first years of the career. I estimate the reduced-form effect of the school entry law on starting wages and find a wage penalty of 1.1–2.0 percent for students born in August (the youngest) compared to students born in September (the oldest). The analysis of educational attainment suggests that significant differences in the type of education exist. Younger students are more likely to pursue an apprenticeship and less likely to have higher education. After five years of labor market experience, the wage penalty amounts to 0.8–1.1 percent, suggesting a persistent (albeit decreasing) negative effect of the school entry rule on labor market outcomes in an early tracking system.

'Bildung hat positive Wirkungen'. Diese Aussage trifft in der Regel auf einen breiten Konsens. Aber wie lassen sich diese angenommenen positiven Wirkungen empirisch erfassen?

Bei den nachstehenden Ausführungen handelt es sich um einen übersetzten Neuabdruck des Berichts "The social and personal benefits of learning: A summary of key research findings", welcher von Leon Feinstein, David Budge und Kathryn Duckworth kompiliert und von John Vorhaus in gekürzter Fassung zur Verfügung gestellt wurde. Die Studie wurde vom "Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning (WBL)" veröffentlicht. Im Zentrum steht die Frage, welche "Benefits" lebenslanges Lernen für Individuen und Gesellschaft erzeugt und welche belastbare empirische Evidenz hierfür angeführt werden kann. Dabei werden entsprechende empirische Forschungsbelege für die vielfältigen positiven Bildungserträge im Rahmen des gesamten Lebensbildungsverlaufs, von der frühen Kindheit bis ins Erwachsenenalter, vorgestellt.

Auf den vorangegangenen Seiten sind die Ergebnisse internationaler Studien vorgestellt worden, die auf vielfältige Weise Benefits des Lernens im Erwachsenenalter aufzeigen. Was kann die deutsche Erwachsenenbildung mit diesen Befunden anfangen?

This paper provides among the first rigorous estimates of the labor-market returns to community college certificates and diplomas, as well as estimating the returns to the more commonly-studied associate’s degrees. Using administrative data from Kentucky, we estimate panel-data models that control for differences among students in pre-college earnings and educational aspirations. Associate’s degrees and diplomas have quarterly earnings returns of nearly $2,400 for women and $1,500 for men, compared with much smaller returns for certificates. There is substantial heterogeneity in returns across fields of study. Degrees, diplomas, and – for women – certificates correspond with higher levels of employment. Not applicable

The HIV epidemic has dramatically decreased labor supply among prime-age adults in sub-Saharan Africa. Using within-country variation in regional HIV prevalence and a synthetic panel, I find that HIV significantly increases the capital-labor ratio in urban manufacturing firms. The impact of HIV on average wages is positive but imprecisely estimated. In contrast, HIV has a large positive impact on the skill premium. The impact of HIV on the wages of low skilled workers is insignificantly different from 0, and is strongly dampened by competition from rural migrants. The HIV epidemic disproportionately increases the incomes of high-skilled survivors, thus increasing inequality.

Bielefeld : Bertelsmann 2012, XII, 343 S., Mit "Bildung in Deutschland 2012" wird der vierte indikatorengestützte Bericht einer unabhängigen Gruppe von Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern vorgelegt. Mit diesem von der Kultusministerkonferenz (KMK) und dem Bundesministeriums für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) geförderten Bericht wird eine alle Bereiche des Bildungswesens umfassende aktuelle Bestandsaufnahme des deutschen Bildungswesens vorgenommen. Die Ausgabe 2012 führt die Berichterstattung über bereits in den vorherigen Berichten dargestellte Indikatoren zum deutschen Bildungswesen fort und präsentiert zugleich neue Indikatoren. Im Rahmen einer vertiefenden Analyse wird Fragen der kulturellen Bildung im Lebenslauf nachgegangen. (DIPF/Orig.)

Which educational systems are efficient? What could we learn from the educational policies in other countries? The current edition of the study enables each country to view its own educational system in relation to other countries: OECD indicators compare the level and conditions of education amongst the OECD member states. The information includes who is a stakeholder in the educational system, how much money is spent, how the educational systems operate and which results they achieve. The study provides detailed statistical material relating to the comparison of student achievements in key subjects, the relationship between graduation certificates and incomes, the money spent on education and the working conditions for educators. Welche Bildungssysteme sind effizient? Was kann man von der Bildungspolitik anderer Länder lernen? Die aktuelle Ausgabe der Studie ermöglicht jedem Land, sein eigenes Bildungssystem im Verhältnis zu anderen Ländern zu betrachten: OECD-Indikatoren vergleichen die Bildungsniveaus und Bedingungen für Bildung der OECD-Länder untereinander. Sie erfassen, wer sich am Bildungswesen beteiligt, was dafür aufgewendet wird, wie Bildungssysteme operieren und welche Ergebnisse sie erzielen. Vom Vergleich von Schülerleistungen in Schlüsselfächern über den Zusammenhang zwischen Abschlüssen und Einkommen bis hin zu den Aufwendungen für Bildung und den Arbeitsbedingungen für Pädagogen legt die Studie umfassendes statistisches Material vor.

We show that within a life-cycle skill accumulation model, IV identification of the return to schooling parameter is either achieved at any point in the life-cycle where the level of skills accumulated beyond school completion for compliers is exactly equal to the post-schooling skill level of non-compliers (the Skill-Equality condition), or when the skill-ratio is equal to the relative population proportions of non-compliers over compliers (the Weighted-Skill-Ratio condition). As a consequence, it is generally impossible to tie IV identification to any specific phase of the life-cycle and there cannot exist a generally acceptable optimal age to sample earnings for IV estimation. The practical example developed in the paper shows precisely how an instrument may fulfill identification at a multiplicity of ages, and how different instruments may achieve identification with specific sampling designs and fail to do so with others. Within a life-cycle skill accumulation data generating process, identification of the return to schooling requires not only implicit assumptions about the underlying model, but also assumptions about the validity of the specific age sampling distribution implied by the data.

The utilization and reward of the human capital of immigrants in the labor market of the host country has been studied extensively. In the Swedish context this question is of great policy relevance due to the high levels of refugee migration and inflow of tied movers. Using Swedish register data covering the period 2001-2008, we analyze the incidence and wage effects of overeducation among non-Western immigrants. We also analyze whether there is state-dependence in overeducation and extend the immigrant educational mismatch literature by investigating whether this is a more severe problem among immigrants than among natives. In line with previous research we find that the incidence of overeducation is higher among immigrants and the return to overeducation is lower indicating that immigrants lose more from being overeducated. We find a high degree of state-dependence in overeducation both among natives and immigrants, but to a higher extent among immigrants.

Finding an instrument that is orthogonal to the disturbance term in the wage equation has been a topic of great deal of debate. Recently, Chesson et al. (2006) proposed that higher discount rates are significantly associated with a range of sexual behaviours, including having sex before age of 16 years. Following their paper, we use unprotected sexual behaviour and earlier age of sexual intercourse as alternative instrumental variables to account for endogeneity in schooling. The Bound et al. (1995) F-test indicates that our instruments are strongly correlated with schooling. We fail to reject the test of over-identifying restrictions, which demonstrates that the proposed instruments are valid and not correlated with the current earnings. In line with previous studies, our results suggest that the IV estimates of the returns to schooling are higher than the OLS estimates. In addition to the conditional mean, the proposed instruments are applied over the wage distribution using Chernozhukov and Hansen (2008) instrumental variable quantile approach.

This article uses micro-data from the Spanish National Immigrant Survey to investigate the impact of Spanish language proficiency on immigrants' earnings. The results, based on Instrumental Variables (IV), point to a substantial earnings return to Spanish proficiency, of approximately 27%. This figure varies largely across educational groups, with high-qualified workers earning a premium of almost 50%. This conspicuous complementarity between formal qualifications and language skills poses a challenge for traditional language training policies, for these typically neglect the immigrants' heterogeneous educational background.

In this paper we estimate the effect of education on lifetime earnings in Europe, by distinguishing between individuals who lived in rural or urban areas during childhood and between individuals who had access to many or few books at age ten. We instrument years of education using reforms of compulsory education in nine different countries, and find that individuals in rural areas were most affected by the reforms while individuals with many books at home mostly benefited from education. Our main result is that books at home at age ten have had long-lasting beneficial effects on the individuals who were pushed by the reforms to increase their years of education.

We evaluate the labor-market returns to General Educational Development (GED) certification using state administrative data. We develop a fuzzy regression discontinuity (FRD) method to account for the fact that GED test takers can repeatedly retake the test until they pass it. Our technique can be applied to other situations where program participation is determined by a score on a retake-able test. Previous regression discontinuity estimates of the returns to GED certification have not accounted for retaking behavior, so these estimates may be biased. We find that the effect of GED certification on either employment or earnings is not statistically significant. GED certification increases postsecondary participation by up to four percentage points for men and up to eight percentage points for women.

The paper provides a theoretical foundation for the empirical regularities observed in estimations of wage consequences of overeducation and undereducation. Workers with more education than required for their jobs are observed to suffer wage penalties relative to workers with the same education in jobs that only require their educational level. Similarly, workers with less education than required for their jobs earn wage rewards. These departures from the Mincer human capital earnings function can be explained by Nash bargaining between workers and employers. Under fairly mild assumptions, Nash bargaining predicts a wage penalty for overeducation and a wage reward for undereducation, and further predicts that the wage penalty will exceed the wage reward. This paper reviews the established empirical regularities and then provides Nash bargaining results that explain these regularities.

We provide a number of contributions of policy, practical and methodological interest to the study of the returns to educational qualifications in the presence of misreporting. First, we provide the first reliable estimates of a highly policy relevant parameter for the UK, namely the return from attaining any academic qualification compared to leaving school at the minimum age without any formal qualification. Second, we provide the academic and policy community with estimates of the accuracy and misclassification patterns of commonly used types of data on educational attainment: administrative files, self-reported information close to the date of completion of the qualification, and recall information ten years after completion. We are in the unique position to assess the temporal patterns of misreporting errors across survey waves, and to decompose misreporting errors into a systematic component linked to individuals' persistent behaviour and into a transitory part reflecting random survey errors. Third, by using the unique nature of our data, we assess how the biases from measurement error and from omitted ability and family background variables interact in the estimation of returns. On the methodological front, we propose a semi-parametric estimation approach based on balancing scores and mixture models, in particular allowing for arbitrarily heterogeneous individual returns.

In this paper, human capital investments are evaluated by assuming heterogeneous returns to schooling. We use the potential outcome approach to measure the causal effect of human capital investments on earnings as a continuous treatment effect. Empirical evidence is based on a sample of West German full-time employed males (BIBB/IAB survey on educational and vocational attainment and career 1998/99). Our estimate of the average partial effect (APE) of an additional year of schooling amounts to 8.7%, which is higher than OLS estimates and quite similar to conventional instrumental variable estimates.

"Seit Mitte der 1990er Jahre hat sich in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland eine Vielzahl zumeist außerschulisch initiierter Schülerhilfe-Projekte etabliert, die den Anforderungen und Belastungen insbesondere sozial benachteiligter Schülerinnen und Schüler mit Formen des Mentoring begegnen möchten. Im Mittelpunkt dieser Initiativen stehen stets einzelne Kinder bzw. Jugendliche, die im Rahmen einer intensiven Eins-zu-Eins-Betreuung durch externe Mentoren - vorwiegend Studierende des Faches Erziehungswissenschaft - gefördert werden sollen. Die entstehenden Beziehungen berühren notwendig auch eine emotionale Ebene und somit indirekt die Entwicklung der Soft Skills von Heranwachsenden. Der Beitrag konkretisiert zunächst die Idee des Mentoring und versucht im Anschluss, den noch immer recht konturlosen Soft-Skills-Begriff zu einer stärkeren Differenzierung zu führen. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird eine Auswahl von Schülerhilfe-Projekten vorgestellt und die Frage diskutiert, inwiefern die darin verwandten Formen des Mentoring für die Förderung überfachlicher Kompetenzen geeignet erscheinen." (Autorenreferat) "Since the mid 1990s, a variety of extracurricular after school tutoring programs have been established to meet the needs and demands of socially disadvantaged students through mentoring. The main focus of these initiatives has been on the support of individual children and adolescents in one-to-one mentoring programs with outside mentors, with a particular focus on mentoring for students interested in becoming science teachers. Relationships that have resulted from extracurricular mentoring programs possess an inherently emotional character, and have thus indirectly expanded students' soft skills. This article defines the idea of mentoring concretely and tries to better define the still quite ambiguous term, 'soft skills'. Against this background, a selection of student assistance projects is presented and the question of the extent to which these forms of mentoring appear suitable to reinforce the social, emotional and communicative competencies of children and adolescents is discussed." (author's abstract)

This paper investigates earnings differentials between immigrants and natives. We focus on returns and on the (imperfect) international transferability of human capital. Data are drawn from the 2009 Italian Labour Force Survey (LFS). We show that returns to human capital are considerably lower for immigrants as compared to natives and that there is no return to pre-immigration work experience, suggesting imperfect transferability of human capital. We also explored the role of human capital, for immigrants and natives, in explaining inter-occupational and intra-occupational earnings progression (differentials). Our findings suggest that the returns on human capital (main source of wage progression) for immigrants (is) are mainly driven by intra-occupational earnings progression. Moreover, and contrary to what is observed for natives, we detect through quantile analysis a glass-ceiling effect for immigrant workers, who appear to face a large penalty in accessing high paying occupations. A number of robustness checks confirm our main results.

The stylized facts suggest a negative relationship between tax progressivity and the skill premium from the early 1960s until the early 1990s, and a positive one thereafter. They also generally imply rising tax progressivity, except for the 1980s. In this paper, we ask whether optimal tax policy is consistent with these observations, taking into account the demographic and technological factors that have also affected the skill premium. To this end, we construct a dynamic general equilibrium model in which the skill premium and the progressivity of the tax system are endogenously determined, with the latter being optimally chosen by a benevolent government. We find that optimal policy delivers both a progressive tax system and model predictions which are generally consistent, except for the 1980s, with the stylized facts relating to the skill premium and progressivity. To capture the patterns in the data over the 1980s requires that we adopt a government policy which is biased towards the interests of skilled agents. Thus, in addition to demographic and technological factors, changes in the preferences of policy-makers appear to be a potentially important factor in determining the evolution of the observed skill premium.

This paper uses data from the 2010 American Community Survey (ACS) to study the returns to language skills of child and adult migrants in the US labor market. We employ an instrumental variable strategy, which exploits differences in language acquisition profiles between immigrants from English- and non-English-speaking countries of origin, to address problems related to endogeneity and measurement error. We find significantly positive returns to language skills and demonstrate that education is an important channel through which language skills affect wages of child migrants. Although the returns of adult migrants do not depend on education, we find that child and adult migrants exhibit similar returns to language skills.

Die Arbeitsmarktchancen von HochschulabsolventInnen rücken schon seit geraumer Zeit massiv in das Zentrum des bildungs- wie arbeitsmarktpolitischen Interesses. Dafür verantwortlich ist das erklärte Ziel, einerseits den Anteil an tertiären Abschlüssen zu erhöhen und andererseits die Beschäftigungsfähigkeit (Employability) der HochschulabsolventInnen zu stärken. Gleichzeitig steht die Bildungs- und Berufsberatung im 21. Jahrhundert vor neuen Herausforderungen, allein die stark wachsenden und damit unübersichtlicher gewordenen 'Landschaften' an tertiären Bildungsangeboten in Verbindung mit den parallel dazu zunehmenden ökonomischen und sozialen Unsicherheiten (Stichworte: Globalisierung, Wissensgesellschaft, Digital Natives, Individualisierung bzw. Fragmentierung von Lebensläufen und Berufsbiographien usw.) üben Druck im Hinblick auf die Modernisierung von Informations- und Beratungsformaten aus. Vor diesem Hintergrund war es das Ziel dieser von der Abt. Arbeitsmarktforschung und Berufsinformation des AMS Österreich in Kooperation mit der Soll & Haberfellner Unternehmens- und Projektberatung in den Jahren 2011/2012 realisierten Studie, durch den Abgleich rezenter Studien und verfügbarer Daten Beschäftigungstrends für HochschulabsolventInnen zu beschreiben. Dazu wurden die Ergebnisse von Studierendenbefragungen und AbsolventInnenstudien, statistische Daten sowie Beschäftigungsprognosen bzw. Prognosen zu Qualifikationsbedarfen und makroökonomischen Trends auf europäischer und nationaler Ebene analysiert und zusammengefasst.

We use a random effects dynamic probit model to estimate the effect of overskilling dynamics on wages. We find that overskilling mismatch is common and more likely among those who have been overskilled in the past. It is also highly persistent, in a manner that is inversely related to educational level. Yet, the wages of university graduates are reduced more by past overskilling, than for any other education level. A possible reason for this wage effect is that graduates tend to be in better-paid jobs and therefore there is more at stake for them if they get it wrong.

Mit "Bildung in Deutschland 2012" wird der vierte indikatorengestützte Bericht einer unabhängigen Gruppe von Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern vorgelegt. Mit diesem von der Kultusministerkonferenz (KMK) und dem Bundesministeriums für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) geförderten Bericht wird eine alle Bereiche des Bildungswesens umfassende aktuelle Bestandsaufnahme des deutschen Bildungswesens vorgenommen. Die Ausgabe 2012 führt die Berichterstattung über bereits in den vorherigen Berichten dargestellte Indikatoren zum deutschen Bildungswesen fort und präsentiert zugleich neue Indikatoren. Im Rahmen einer vertiefenden Analyse wird Fragen der kulturellen Bildung im Lebenslauf nachgegangen. (DIPF/Orig.)

We study the effect of a compulsory education reform in Sweden on adult health and mortality. The reform was implemented by municipalities between 1949 and 1962 as a social experiment and implied an extension of compulsory schooling from 7 or 8 years depending on municipality to 9 years nationally. We use detailed individual data on education, hospitalizations, labor force participation and mortality for Swedes born between 1946 and 1957. Individual level data allow us to study the effect of the education reform on three main groups of outcomes: (i) mortality until age 60 for different causes of death; (ii) hospitalization by cause and (iii) exit from the labor force primarily through the disability insurance program. The results show reduced male mortality up to age fifty for those assigned to the reform, but these gains were erased by increased mortality later on. We find similar patterns in the probability of being hospitalized and the average costs of inpatient care. Men who acquired more education due to the reform are less likely to retire early.

This paper conducts an empirical analysis of the relationship between wage inequality, employment structure, and returns to education in urban areas of Mexico during the past two decades (1987-2008). Applying Melly's (2005) quantile regression based decomposition, we find that changes in wage inequality have been driven mainly by variations in educational wage premia. Additionally, we find that changes in employment structure, including occupation and firm size, have played a vital role. This evidence seems to suggest that the changes in wage inequality in urban Mexico cannot be interpreted in terms of a skill-biased change, but rather they are the result of an increasing demand for skills during that period.

In this paper, we consider a model of on-the-job learning where workers learn informally by watching and imitating colleagues. We estimate the rate of knowledge diffusion inside the firm using two matched worker-firm data sets from Morocco and Senegal. We rely on non-linear least squares to estimate the structural parameters of the informal learning model and account for firm heterogeneity using firm factors derived from a principal component analysis. We find that the rate of knowledge diffusion is around 7 percent in Morocco and Senegal, but part of the learning-by-watching returns stems from firm heterogeneity. Informal training significantly affects the shape of returns to tenure in these two countries. Finally, we estimate an extended model with both learning-by-watching and learning-by-doing and find significant benefits from imitating colleagues in Morocco.

Estimates using admissions lotteries suggest that urban charter schools boost student achievement, while charter schools in other settings do not. Using the largest available sample of lotteried applicants to charter schools, we explore student-level and school-level explanations for this difference in Massachusetts. In an econometric framework that isolates sources of charter effect heterogeneity, we show that urban charter schools boost achievement well beyond that of urban public school students, while non-urban charters reduce achievement from a higher baseline. Student demographics explain some of these gains since urban charters are most effective for non-whites and low-baseline achievers. At the same time, non-urban charter schools are uniformly ineffective. Our estimates also reveal important school-level heterogeneity within the urban charter sample. A non-lottery analysis suggests that urban charters with binding, well-documented admissions lotteries generate larger score gains than under-subscribed urban charter schools with poor lottery records. Finally, we link charter impacts to school characteristics such as peer composition, length of school day, and school philosophy. The relative effectiveness of urban lottery-sample charters is accounted for by these schools' embrace of the No Excuses approach to urban education.

Is there a reward for basic skills in the German labor market? To answer this question, we examine the relationship between literacy, numeracy and monthly gross earnings of full-time employed workers. We use data from the ALWA survey, augmented by test scores on basic cognitive skills as well as administrative earnings data. Our results indicate that earnings are positively related to both types of skills. There furthermore is no evidence for non-linearity in this relationship and only little heterogeneity when differentiating by sub-groups. Zahlen sich Grundkompetenzen am deutschen Arbeitsmarkt aus? Um diese Frage zu beantworten, untersuchen wir den Zusammenhang von Lesekompetenzen und alltagsmathematischen Fähigkeiten mit der monatlichen Brutto-Entlohnung von Vollzeitbeschäftigten. Wir nutzen dazu Daten der ALWA-Befragung, die wir mit Testergebnissen zu den Grundkompetenzen der Befragten sowie mit administrativen Daten zu ihrer Entlohnung anreichern. Unsere Ergebnisse weisen auf einen positiven Zusammenhang zwischen der Entlohnung und beiden Kompetenzdomänen hin. Darüber hinaus finden wir jedoch keine Anhaltspunkte für Nicht-Linearität in diesem Zusammenhang und nur wenig Heterogenität zwischen verschiedenen Teilgruppen am Arbeitsmarkt.

This paper investigates if better access to secondary education increases enrolment in primary schools among children in the 6-10 age group. Using a household-level longitudinal survey covering 43 villages in a poor state in India, we find support for the hypothesis that better access to secondary education increases enrolment and attendance among children in the primary school-going age group. A 1 km decrease in the distance to the nearest secondary school increases the proportion of children in a household who are enroled in primary school by 6.5 percentage points. These results do not change significantly even after we account for endogenous placement of secondary schools and measurement error issues. Moreover, we find that the effect is consistent with what theory predicts: the marginal effect is larger for poorer households and boys (who are more likely to enter the labour force). Further, using a nationally representative survey for India (National Sample Survey 2007-08), we also provide some suggestive evidence that this effect may be quite widespread. This result gives support to the assertion that if the costs of post primary schooling are too high, as they would be if secondary schools are far away, parents have lesser interest in their children's education even at the primary stage.

Many countries use centralized exit exams as a governance devise of the school system. While abundant evidence suggests positive effects of central exams on achievement tests, previous research on university-bound students shows no effects on subsequent earnings. We suggest that labor-market effects may be more imminent for students leaving school directly for the labor market and, on rigid labor markets, for unemployment. Exploiting variation in exit-exam systems across German states, we find that central exams are indeed associated with higher earnings for students from school types directly bound for the labor market, as well as with lower unemployment.

We estimate the effect of education on lifetime income in Europe, by distinguishing between individuals who lived in rural or urban areas during childhood and between individuals who had access to many or few books at age ten. We instrument years of education using reforms of compulsory education in nine different countries, and find that individuals in rural areas were most affected by the reforms. Among those affected, individuals with many books at home at age ten enjoyed substantially higher returns to their additional education. We argue that the long-lasting beneficial effects of having books at home are due to the cultural environment in the household and the development of cognitive skills rather than to the presence of short-term liquidity constraints.

The literature estimating returns to education has often utilized spousal education and parental education as instrument variables (IV). However, due to usual survey designs, both IVs are available only for the individuals whose spouse or parents are present in the same household. The IV estimates based on these selective sub-samples may be inconsistent, even when the IVs satisfy the standard assumptions. In this paper, we examine the empirical relevance of this issue in the Chinese context. To our surprise, unlike the selection issue in other situations, this kind of selection does not appear particularly worrisome, suggesting that the previous IV results are robust. In particular, using China Household Income Project 1995 and 2002, we find that correcting for this potential issue has only a modest impact on the magnitude of the standard IV estimates using parental education as an IV, but a negligible impact on those using spousal education. Using the specification tests proposed, we find that these impacts are generally not statistically significant. These results are further confirmed by our analysis using U.S. data. We believe that these results are of use to both policymakers and practitioners.

This paper employs the Ordinary Least Squares, Instrumental Variables and Treatment Effect models to a new dataset from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS) to estimate return to four-year university education in 2008. Our estimates reveal that income premium of four-year university education is about 97 percent above that of high school education, and robust to the various estimators.

We use a credible regression discontinuity design to estimate causal education effects. Pupils in the Swiss education system had to pass a centrally organized exam that classified them into different levels of secondary school, and that ultimately determined their educational degree. A major feature of this exam was the local randomization around the classification threshold due to the impossibility of strategic sorting. Our preliminary results suggest large and significant effects on earnings, political interest, and attitudes toward immigrants. The extension to a wider set of data is part of ongoing research.

We estimate the monetary return to attending a highly selective college using the College and Beyond (C&B) Survey linked to Detailed Earnings Records from the Social Security Administration (SSA). This paper extends earlier work by Dale and Krueger (2002) that examined the relationship between the college that students attended in 1976 and the earnings they self-reported reported in 1995 on the C&B follow-up survey. In this analysis, we use administrative earnings data to estimate the return to various measures of college selectivity for a more recent cohort of students: those who entered college in 1989. We also estimate the return to college selectivity for the 1976 cohort of students, but over a longer time horizon (from 1983 through 2007) using administrative data. We find that the return to college selectivity is sizeable for both cohorts in regression models that control for variables commonly observed by researchers, such as student high school GPA and SAT scores. However, when we adjust for unobserved student ability by controlling for the average SAT score of the colleges that students applied to, our estimates of the return to college selectivity fall substantially and are generally indistinguishable from zero. There were notable exceptions for certain subgroups. For black and Hispanic students and for students who come from less-educated families (in terms of their parents' education), the estimates of the return to college selectivity remain large, even in models that adjust for unobserved student characteristics.

Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 57 (2011) 3, S. 421-437, Die normative Frage, wie Bildung unter den Individuen zu verteilen ist, kann aus zwei unterschiedlichen Perspektiven angegangen werden. Zum einen kann man fragen, welche Verteilung angesichts der wünschenswerten öffentlichen Effekte von Bildung angebracht ist. Davon zu unterscheiden ist die Frage nach der gerechten Verteilung des privaten Nutzens von Bildung. In diesem Beitrag wird - unter Berücksichtigung beider Perspektiven - eine drei Verteilungsprinzipien umfassende Konzeption von Bildungsgerechtigkeit entwickelt. Davon ausgehend wird diskutiert, inwiefern eine öffentliche Bereitstellung, Finanzierung und Regulierung von Bildungsangeboten angezeigt ist. (DIPF/Orig.), The normative question of how education is to be distributed among individuals can be approached from two different perspectives. On the one hand, one can ask which distribution would be adequate in view of the desired public effects of education. On the other hand, there is the question of the just distribution of the private benefit of education. Taking into consideration both perspectives, the author develops a concept of educational justice comprising three principles of distribution. Based on this, he discusses in how far a public provision, financing, and regulation of educational programs is advisable. (DIPF/Orig.)

The estimation of the economic return to education has perhaps been one of the predominant areas of analysis in applied economics for over 50 years. In this short note we consider some of the recent directions taken by the literature, and also some of the blockages faced by both science and policymakers in pushing forward some key issues. This serves by way of introduction to a set of papers for a special issue of the Economics of Education Review.

This paper relaxes the assumption of homogeneous rates of return to schooling by employing nonparametric kernel regression. This approach allows us to examine the differences in rates of return to education both across and within groups. Similar to previous studies we find that on average blacks have higher returns to education than whites, natives have higher returns than immigrants and younger workers have higher returns than older workers. Contrary to previous studies we find that the average gap of the rate of return between white and black workers is larger than previously thought and the gap is smaller between immigrants and natives. We also uncover significant heterogeneity, the extent of which differs both across and within groups. The estimated densities of returns vary across groups and time periods and are often skewed. For example, during the period 1950-1990, at least 5% of whites have negative returns. Finally, we uncover the characteristics common amongst those with the smallest and largest returns to education. For example, we find that immigrants, aged 50-59, are most likely to have rates of return in the bottom 5% of the population.

This paper estimates private returns to education in Mexico by means of the Mincer model. The natural ability bias that the literature reports in this type of estimations is tried to be solved using the control function method. Through this method some variables relevant to wage determination are included in the model, such as natural ability index, mother's education, household infrastructure, height and health. Results suggest that the returns to education by year of schooling in Mexico are between 8.2% and 8.4 %. On the other hand, results by level of education suggest that more education is associated with higher returns. The highest return to education in both absolute and relative terms is provided by Postgraduate education followed by Graduate education. In general, results suggest that there is a convex relationship between education level and wage.

Increasingly, grade retention is viewed as an important alternative to social promotion, yet evidence to date is unable to disentangle how the effect of grade retention varies by abilities and over time. The key challenge is differential selection of students into retention across grades and by abilities. Because existing quasi-experimental methods cannot address this question, we develop a new strategy that is a hybrid between a control function and a generalization of the fixed effects approach. Applying our method to nationally-representative, longitudinal data, we find evidence of dynamic selection into retention and that the treatment effect of retention varies considerably across grades and unobservable abilities of students. Our strategy can be applied more broadly to many time-varying or multiple treatment settings.