Students' choices in education can only be based on expected outcomes. Econometric models that infer expectations based on ex post outcomes impose a rational structure of expectations on school performance and post-graduation earnings. Direct surveys suggest much ignorance and fuzziness. We use...

American business seems to be infatuated with its workers' "leadership" skills. Is there such a thing, and is it rewarded in labor markets? Using the Project Talent, NLS72 and High School and Beyond datasets, we show that men who occupied leadership positions in high school earn more as adults,...

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...

This paper investigates determinants and wage effects of educational mismatch for both natives and immigrants in Germany. Using the GSOEP panel data from 1991 to 2013, I find that conditional on educational attainment immigrants face a higher incidence of overeducation compared to their native...

Building on recent analyses that find a sizeable, overall gender wage gap in Azerbaijan's workforce, this paper uses data on young workers in their early years in the labor market to understand how gender wage gaps evolve over time, if at all. Using a unique database from a survey of young...

We expand Acemoglu and Pischke's seminal model of training in imperfect labor markets by including the system of collective wage bargaining and the components of firms' training costs. Thus we can adapt their model to institutional changes that occurred since the 1990s. The model and the...

This paper provides precise figures on the incidence and wage penalties of mismatching in Germany. We use the BIBB/BAuA Employment Survey 2006 to compute two different measures of person-to-job matching. A first measure indicates an educational (mis)match, i.e., whether a worker’s attained...

In this paper we analyze career dynamics for US workers who have more schooling than their peers in the same occupation. We use data from the NLSY79 combined with the CPS to analyze transitions into and out of overeducated employment, together with the corresponding effects on wages....

The labour market situation of low-educated people is particularly critical in most advanced economies, especially among youngsters and women. Policies aiming to increase their employability either try to foster their productivity and/or to decrease their wage cost. Yet, the evidence on the...

In this paper we use a newly constructed dataset following 30,000 Italian individuals from high school to labor market and we analyze whether the gender composition of peers in high school affected their choice of college major, their academic performance and their labor market income. We...