This paper uses Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data linked to administrative data to track the educational and labour market outcomes of young people. Students with lower skills have lower rates of participation in further education. While men with low skills out-earn...

Wage inequality is a highly debated topic in policy and academic circles. Policy makers typically consider that a policy promoting the equalization of education levels among the individuals of a society – pushing everybody towards tertiary education – is a good strategy to fight wage...

Using data for the 1990's, this paper examines the role of sheepskin effects in the returns to education for Japan. Our estimations indicate that sheepskin effects explain about 50% of the total returns to schooling. We further find that sheepskin effects are only important for workers in small...

Indicators for quality of schooling are not only relatively new in the world but also unavailable for a sizable share of the world's population. In their absence, some proxy measures have been devised. One simple but powerful idea has been to use the schooling premium for migrant workers in the...

This paper addresses the importance of compositional changes in the labor force for the development of the wage distribution. Demographic change and higher educational attainment imply a shift toward employees with more experience and/or better education. These groups are characterized by higher...

The human capital century -- Inequality across the twentieth century -- Skill-biased technological change -- Origins of the virtues -- Economic foundations of the high school movement -- America's graduation from high school -- Mass higher education in the twentieth century -- The race between...