In this paper, human capital investments are evaluated by assuming heterogeneous returns to schooling. We use the potential outcome approach to measure the causal effect of human capital investments on earnings as a continuous treatment effect. Empirical evidence is based on a sample of West...

By making use of Duncan & Hoffman's empirical model, the economic returns to overeducation and undereducation are estimated using comparable microdata from the middle of the 2000s for 25 European countries. The estimates confirm some of the main results found in the literature. The wage premium...

A vast literature aimed at understanding the nature and causes of wage inequality focuses on the skill premium as a key object of interest. In an environment where both the skill premium and the share of skilled workers are changing, however, the between-skill-group component of inequality may...

Several studies have identified the impact of trade liberalization in developing countries on the return to education within a Mincerian framework through a difference-in-difference estimator or with industry-level measures of trade openness. These studies have typically estimated the return to...

In this study, we try to connect the economic literature on human capital formation with findings from neurobiology and psychology on early childhood development and self-regulation. Our basic framework for assessing the distribution of agespecific returns to investment in skills is an...

In this paper, human capital investments are evaluated by assuming heterogeneous returns to schooling. We use the potential outcome approach to measure the causal effect of human capital investments on earnings as a continuous treatment effect. Empirical evidence is based on a sample of West...

This study addresses the question: Are workers who hold a university degree increasingly filling job openings meant for people with lower levels of schooling? It focuses on Portugal, where the higher education system has been expanding at a fast pace and the share of university graduates in...

This paper investigates the differences in early occupational earnings of UK male graduates by degree subject during the period 1980-1993. We match administrative student-level data from the Universities' Statistical Record (USR) and occupational earnings information from the New Earnings Survey...