Chay, Guryan and Mazumder (2009) found substantial racial convergence in AFQT and NAEP scores across cohorts born in the 1960's and early 1970's that was concentrated among blacks in the South. We demonstrated a close tracking between variation in the test score convergence across states and...

This paper estimates the effects on earnings of “gap years” between high school and university enrollment. The effect is estimated by means of standard earnings functions augmented to account for gap years and a rich set of control variables using administrative Swedish data. We find that...

Swedish elementary school children stopped receiving written end of year report cards following a grading reform in 1982. Gradual implementation of the reform creates an opportunity to investigate the effects of being graded on adult educational attainments and earnings for children in the...

This paper investigates the male wage inequality and its evolution over the 1994-2002 period in Turkey by estimating Mincerian wage equations using OLS and quantile regression techniques. Male wage inequality is high in Turkey. While it declined at the lower end of the wage distribution it...

This study exposes a comparative treatment of the private returns to education in Palestine and Turkey over the period 2004-2008. Comparable data, similar definitions and same methodology are used in the estimations. The estimates are provided first for average returns to education second for...

This study attempts to address the issue of declining labour intensity in India's organized manufacturing in order to understand the constraints on employment generation in the labour intensive sectors. Using primary survey data covering 252 labour intensive manufacturing-exporting firms across...

I examine how one central aspect of the family environment - sibling sex composition - affects women's gender conformity. Using Danish administrative data, I causally estimate the effect of having a second-born brother relative to a sister for first-born women. I show that women with a brother...

This paper investigates the role of skill depreciation in the relationship between work interruptions and subsequent wages. Using a unique longitudinal dataset, the Swedish part of the International Adult Literacy Survey, we are able to analyze changes in literacy skills for individuals as a...

We investigate skill mismatch and its impact on gender differences in wage gap and in returns to education in Sweden 1993 to 2002.Women are more likely to have more formal education than what is normally required for their occupation (overeducation), while men are more likely to have less...

Little is known about the payoffs to apprenticeship training in the German speaking countries for the participants. OLS estimates suggest that the returns are similar to those of other types of schooling. However, there is a lot of heterogeneity in the types of apprenticeships offered, and...