Efectos del prestigo de los colegios de enseñanza media, de las Universidades y el aprendizaje del empleador sobre los salarios en Chile

This paper studies the effects of attending a private high school, the university ranking and the employer learning on wages. The empirical strategy is based on the Mincer-type wage regressions. The analysis was carried out using individual-level data from Chile. I find a large and significant effect on wages at the beginning of workers’ careers from attending a private high school and from attending a highly ranked university. These findings can be rationalized by the statistical discrimination and employer learning model since the effects of attending a private high school or highly ranked university decrease with experience. I construct an employer learning model to explain these decreases and find employers decrease by 50 per cent the weight they place on university ranking when setting wages in three years. My findings further indicate that incorporating university admission test percentile rankings in employment applications can significantly improve the market’s ability to appropriately assign wages by decreasing the information gap between potential employees and employers.