We exploit the cross?country and time variation in the demographics and education structure of 11 European countries to study how cohort size has affected real earnings in Europe. When we pool the data of all countries, we find that cohort size has a negative and statistically significant effect...

This paper analyses the extent to which gender differences in human capital contribute to explaining the observable wage differential in favour of men and its reduction since the mid-eighties among West German full-time employees in the private sector. Based on a simple analytical framework, the...

Der Ausbau von Ganztagsschulen genießt derzeit – u.a. auf Grund des schlechten Abschneidens deutscher Schüler bei der PISA-Studie – hohe Priorität in der politischen Agenda. In diesem Beitrag soll untersucht werden, wie sich der Ausbau von Ganztagsschulen auf die Erwerbsbeteiligung von...

Ziel dieses Artikels ist es, die wesentlichen bildungspolitischen Erfahrungen der letzten Jahrzehnte in Frankreich darzustellen und im Hinblick auf die bildungspolitische Debatte in Deutschland zu bewerten. Die allgemeinen Ziele der Bildungspolitik - wie z.B. die Anhebung des Bildungsniveaus,...

This paper analyses the impact of family background, gender and cohort on educational attainment in France and Germany, relying on a theoretical model imbedded in the human capital theory. In a second step, the educational process is decomposed into school and post-school achievement. The same...

This paper analyses the link between educational attainment and unemployment risk in a French-German comparison, based on a discrete time competing risks hazard rate model applied to comparable microdata sets. The unemployment risk is broken down into the risk of entering unemployment and the...

This paper analyses the developments in the returns to education in West Germany for the period from 1984 to 1997. Based on simple Mincer-type wage equations, we estimate a return of about 8% for men and 10% for women, and these returns have remained remarkably stable over the period. On the...

This paper analyses the relationship between education, gender and earnings in France and Germany. The model chosen here enables to estimate the impact of education not only on the expected earnings level but also on their dispersion, taking gender-specific sample selectivity into account. The...

This paper analyses the determinants of participation in higher education in West Germany. In particular, the role of social origin as well as of expectations regarding the labour market outcome of a higher education degree and of public educational policy are examined. The estimations are based...

This paper aims at formulating a theoretical model of educational attainment which is directly implementable empirically. The conceptual frame-work relies on the human capital theory, where individuals weigh the costs and the returns of education to decide on the optimal amount of education they...