In this paper, we exploit an exogenous change in the passing standard required to obtain a General Educational Development (GED) credential to identify the impact of the GED on the quarterly earnings of male dropouts, utilizing the Texas Schools Micro Data Panel (TSMP). These unique data contain...

Ireland's 'Celtic Tiger' years saw GDP per capita rise from 60% of the EU average to 120% of the average over the course of the 1990s, with a growth in employment of about 40% over the period 1994-2001. What were the consequences of the boom for returns to education and wage inequality? This...

The private provision of educational services has been representing an increasing fraction of the Peruvian schooling system, especially in recent last decades. While there have been many claims about the differences in quality between private and public schools, there is no complete assessment...

Ireland’s “Celtic Tiger” years saw GDP per capita rise from 60% of the EU average to 120% of the average over the course of the 1990s, with a growth in employment of about 40% over the period 1994-2001. What were the consequences of the boom for returns to education and wage inequality?...

The quality dimension of immigrant human capital has received little attention in the economic assimilation literature. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate how human capital acquired in different source countries may be adjusted according to its quality in the Canadian labor market....

This study examines the causal link between individuals' occupational knowledge, educational choices, and labor market outcomes. We proxy occupational knowledge with mandatory visits to job information centers (JICs) in Germany while still attending school. Exogenous variation in the location...

The paper contrasts the pattern of returns to human capital in different economic sectors. As job mobility, especially across sectors, is limited, it is argued that coefficients of experience in earnings regressions may capture or be interpreted as the growth rate - net of depreciation - of...

A firm's decision to engage in apprenticeship training is to a large extent determined by the cost-benefit ratio of such an investment compared to other alternatives of securing skilled workers. Empirical evidence shows that in a well-functioning apprenticeship training system, a large share of...

The degree to which economic status is transmitted from one generation to the next is an important indicator for the inequality of opportunities. One crucial element of intergenerational mobility is the way parents influence the education of their children. Unlike in the UK or in the US, in...

In this paper we explore the labor market returns to the General Education Development exam, or GED. Using new data from the Current Population Survey, we examine how the return to the GED varies between U.S. natives and the foreign-born. We find that foreignborn men who hold a GED but received...