Sorting on the labour market : a literature overview and theoretical framework

In the literature there are basically two main approaches that explain the positive link between the level of education and wages: the human-capital theory and the signalling/screening (collectively known as sorting) theory. We highlight the similarity and differences between these theories and present a general theoretical model of screening with productivity-enhancing effects of education from which we derive four empirically testable hypothesis. -- human-capital theory ; signalling ; screening