The risk of investment in schooling has largely been ignored. We assess thevariance in the rate of return by surveying … skewed. Our best guess of ex ante risk in university education is a coefficient ofvariation of about 0.3, comparable to that …

Firms hiring fresh graduates face uncertainty on the future productivity of workers. Theory suggests that starting … wages reflect this, with lower pay for greater uncertainty. We use the dispersion of exam grades within a field of education … if the variance of exam grades is higher and higher if the skew is higher: employers shift the cost of productivity risk …