Literature examining immigrants' educational disadvantage across countries focuses generally on average differences in educational outcomes between immigrants and natives disguising thereby that immigrants are a highly heterogeneous group. The aim of this paper is to examine educational...

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 use Swiss data to test whether intergenerational educational mobility is affected by the age at which children enroll in kindergarten. Taking advantage of heterogeneity across cantons we find that early kindergarten enrollment significantly increases educational mobility. -- Kindergarten ;...

The transition from school-to-work has been a burning issue in most countries for the last decades. So far research on this topic has not been conclusive, and it is still not clear whether transition problems are just individual, linked to the type of education followed at upper-secondary level,...

Switzerland radically changed its migration policy in the mid-nineties from a "non-qualified only" policy to one that favors the immigration of highly qualified migrants. To analyze the impact of this change on the schooling outcomes of migrants, this paper compares the PISA (OECD Programme for...

This study investigates the determinants and motives of professionals who change career to vocational teaching. The framework for this study is the Swiss vocational education system, which requires that teachers of vocational subjects must have a prior career in that specific field. Thus, to...

We address the impact of education upon wage inequality by drawing on evidence from fifteen European countries, during a period ranging between 1980 and 1995. We focus on within-educational-levels wage inequality by estimating quantile regressions of Mincer equations and analysing the...

Wage expectations are important determinants for individual schooling decisions. However, research on individual expectations of students is scarce. The paper presents the Swiss results of a survey that was conducted in 10 European countries. Its main findings are that point estimates of wages...

In this paper we analyse the sibling size and birth-order effect on educational achievement in Switzerland on the basis of PISA data. We find an overall modest size and birth-order effect. The sibling size effect, however, is a product of a substantial and significant negative size effect for...

The main interest of this paper is to compare the value of education systems of different countries. For this reason I use data on workers who have completed their education before immigrating to Switzerland to estimate a country specific return to education. I estimate the standard...