We apply a recently proposed method to disentangle unobserved heterogeneity from risk in returns to education to data for the USA, the UK and Germany. We find that in residual wage variation, uncertainty by far dominates unobserved heterogeneity. The relation between uncertainty and level of...

"Economists measure the effects of immigration through the yardstick of income. This book offers a broad survey of the conventional approach but in addition, also considers better measures of welfare or well-being, offers a detailed description and evaluation of policies - rules, regulations and...

We use a unique data set about the wage distribution that Swiss students expect for themselves ex ante, deriving parametric and non-parametric measures to capture expected wage risk. These wage risk measures are unfettered by heterogeneity which handicapped the use of actual market wage...

We report evidence that university reputation affects wages of bachelors in China. An unconditional difference between a top-100 university and a top 400-500 university of 23% is increased to some 28% by adding controls. Within the top-100 there is no differentiation in pay-off. Self-rated...

This paper examines the evolution of the returns to education in Portugal over the 1980s and early 1990s. The main findings indicate that the returns to education have increased, particularly after joining the European Union in 1986. Since this occurred along with an increase in the level of...

The survey primarily seeks to expose the literature, presumably in a well-organized framework. There is no attempt to present any new analyses; only the chapter that lays out the potential scope for the presence of risk in schooling decisions contains some data specifically collected and...

We replicate Shaw (J Labor Econ 14(4):626–653, <CitationRef CitationID="CR20">1996</CitationRef>) who found that individual wage growth is higher for individuals with greater preference for risk taking. Expanding her dataset with more American observations and data for Germany, Spain, and Italy, we find evidence that risk attitudes are...</citationref>

This highly accessible book illustrates how policy makers can address and nurture the effects of growing ethnic diversity in European labor markets.