for most qualifications. The results from the paper suggest that conventional OLS estimates of the returns to education … obtain no formal qualifications. There is also some evidence that individuals with lower tastes for education, have … significantly higher marginal returns to certain education qualifications. We also find that post-school qualifications …

. However, the reform affected the proportion with qualifications, as well as schooling length. To shed light on whether the … returns reflect extra schooling or qualifications, we exploit another institutional rule - the Easter Leaving Rule - to obtain … unbiased estimates of the effect of qualifications. We find sizeable returns to academic qualifications - increasing the …