In 1997, the French government put into effect a law that permanently exempted young French male citizens born after Jan 1, 1979 from mandatory military service while still requiring those born before that cutoff date to serve. This paper uses a regression discontinuity design to identify the...

An emerging body of literature examines the economic returns to quality of postsecondary education. This literature has predominantly focused on the returns to the most selective universities. However, less is known about the extent to which these gains are realized for the academically marginal...

In this study we present the theoretical framework of the so called Mincerian equations used for modelling returns to education. Then, we construct a conceptual framework which allows us to answer the question “What happens to doctoral degree holders in the labour market?”. We analyse data...

This paper estimates social returns to education in Turkey. Most evidence on spillovers from human capital comes mostly from developed countries, and estimates vary from country to country. The paper finds that social returns to education are around 3-4%, whereas private returns per year of...

This article summarises the recent literature on the relationship between inequality in wages and education for Portugal. The main conclusions are the following. First, Portu-gal is one of the OECD countries with lowest educational level. At the same time, re-turns to education are large, and...

Universities have come under increasing pressure to become key drivers of economic development in the age of the knowledge economy. Yet we know very little about the impact of university quality and scientific excellence on the probability of graduates finding jobs. This paper investigates the...

In this paper we explore the connection between education and wage inequality in Spain for the period 1994-2001. Drawing on quantile regression, we describe the conditional wage distribution of different populations groups. We find that higher education is associated with higher wage dispersion....

This article focuses on the contributions from the emerging positivist epistemological approach, endorsed by the economics of language and the economics of education, to study the returns to language skills, assuming that language competencies constitute key components of human capital. It...

This paper examines the pattern of the labor market appraisal of workers’ schooling, focusing on the Northern regions of the country. The manufacturing industry is studied in particular since a large part of the economic activity is located in the North, relative to the rest of the country’s...