Essays in Economics of Education.

Education as a way of increasing human capital is considered to be a basic factor of the growth process of the aggregate economy. The returns to investment into human capital are thus an important issue to analyze. In his PH.D thesis Mr Roope Uusitalo studies the effects of education on earnings in Finland. Using a unique individual level data set for men that also includes ability measures and information on family background and appropriate estimation techniques Uusitalo presents new estimates for the return of education in Finland, which are much higher than suggested by earlier studies. Uusitalo also takes a broader issue by trying to explain changes in earnings distribution. He arguments a well-known single-index model of skills with the supply of skills and is able to account for a substantial portion of change in earnings inequality between groups over the 1980s by changes in the supply of skills.