The educational screening hypothesis states that beyond a certain point schooling functions as a signaling device to identify pre-existing talents. We test for the presence of screening by comparing the schooling and earnings of self-employed workers and of those employed by others in a sample...

The educational screening hypothesis states that beyond a certain point schooling functions as a signaling device to identify pre-existing talents. We test for the presence of screening by comparing the schooling and earnings of self-employed workers and of those employed by others in a sample...

Using both time-series and pooled cross-section, time-series data for 44 industries over the period 1947-1997 in the United States, no evidence is found to support the idea that the growth of skills or educational attainment had any statistically significant effect on growth of earnings. On the...