Duration to First Job and the Return to Schooling: Estimates from a Search-Matching Model.

This paper investigates the properties of the joint distribution of the duration to the first post-schooling full-time job and of the accepted wage for that job within a search-matching-bargaining theoretic model. The model provides an interpretation of the observations on duration fundamentals in determining the accepted wages that differentiates between behavioral influences and market fundamentals in determining the accepted wage-schooling relationship. The return to schooling is appropriately measured by differences in the wage offer distribution, which depends only on market fundamentals. We use data from the 1979 youth cohort of the National Longitudinal Surveys of Labor Market Experience to follow several school-leaving cohorts of young males. Copyright 1995 by The Review of Economic Studies Limited.