This paper examines rates of return to schooling in Kazakhstan using OLS and instrumental variable (IV) methodologies. We use spouse's education and smoking as instruments. We find that spouse's education is a valid instrument and that conventional OLS estimates that assume the exogenous nature...

In this paper, we examine the wage returns to an extra year of primary school using a policy reform in Egypt, which reduced compulsory primary schooling from 6 to 5 years. Since this policy changed the duration of primary school while providing the same diploma, we can estimate the human capital...

This study finds evidence of wage divergence between immigrants and natives in Germany using a country-wide household panel from 1984 to 2014. We incorporate the possibility of wage divergence into a two-period model of economic assimilation by modeling the differences in the efficiency of human...

In this study standard Mincer earnings equations are estimated using both ordinary least squares (OLS) and quantile regression in order to give a comprehensive picture of the returns to education in Germany and Hungary for the year 2000. To make the cross-country comparison of the returns to...

We estimate the increase in earnings from a law degree relative to a bachelor's degree for graduates who majored in different fields in college. Students with humanities and social sciences majors comprise approximately 47 percent of law degree holders compared to 23 percent of terminal...

This paper studies the Ordinary Least-Squared (OLS) and Instrumental Variables (IV) estimates of the returns to schooling for male workers in Spain. OLS estimates are often biased due to the endogeneity of schooling, measurement errors or omitted variables. Proper IV estimates correct this bias....

Human capital investments at an early age appear crucial for individual outcomes. Family size might affect these investments influencing parental time and economic resources invested in children's education. This aspect is related to the children quantity-quality trade-off proposed by Becker...

This paper re-examines the instrumental variable (IV) approach to estimating returns to education by use of compulsory school law (CSL) in the US. We show that the IV-approach amounts to a change in model specification by changing the causal status of the variable of interest. From this...

The validity of family background variables instrumenting education in income regressions has been much criticized. In this paper, we use data of the 2004 German Socio-Economic Panel and Bayesian analysis in order to analyze to what degree violations of the strong validity assumption affect the...

The literature estimating returns to education has often utilized spousal education and parental education as instrument variables (IV). However, due to usual survey designs, both IVs are available only for the individuals whose spouse or parents are present in the same household. The IV...