This paper shows a somehow counterintuitive result: an increase in the exam difficulty may reduce the average quality (productivity) of selected individuals. Since the exam does not verify all skills, when its standard rises, candidates with relatively low skills emphasized in the test and high...

A parallel of education with transformative processes in standard markets suggest that a more severe control of the quality of the output will improve the overall quality of the education. This paper shows a somehow counterintuitive result: an increase in the exam difficulty may reduce the...

A parallel of education with transformative processes in standard markets suggest that a more severe control of the quality of the output will improve the overall quality of the education. This paper shows a somehow counterintuitive result: an increase in the exam diffculty may reduce the...

In this paper, we formulate and estimate a structural model of post-schooling training that explicitly allows for possible complementarity between initial schooling levels and returns to training. Precisely, the wage outcome equation depends on accumulated schooling and on the incidence of...

The academic circles are devoting a growing interest to delayed graduation and overeducation, but none has analyzed the joint consequences of these two phenomena. Thus, this paper studies the link between graduation not within the minimum period and overeducation, and the effects of these...

This paper develops a theoretical and an empirical model to study the effect of higher employment protection on investments in tertiary education. The mechanism driving this link is the effect of employment protection on worker flows. Worker flows (which are synonymous with job flows in my...

In diesem Arbeitspapier wird die Hypothese untersucht, dass die gesamtwirtschaftliche Leistungsfähigkeit unter dem Einfluss demographischer und bildungspolitischer Faktoren steht. Als erstes wird ein Überblick über die Entwicklung des Qualifikationsangebots und der Arbeitsproduktivität in...

Assuming decreasing returns to education and the endogenous supply of qualified and non-qualified labour it is shown to be efficient to supplement a consumption tax with positive incentives for education. If the return from education is isoelastic and if the choice is between (i) subsidizing the...

We propose a model of schooling that can account for the observed heterogeneity in workers' productivity and educational attainment. Identical unskilled agents can get a degree at a cost, but becoming skilled entails an additional unobservable effort cost. Individual labor can then be used as an...

This paper explores students' expectations about the returns to completing higher education and provides first evidence on \textit{perceived} signaling and human capital effects. We elicit counterfactual labor market expectations for the hypothetical scenarios of leaving university with or...