Is technological change biased towards the unskilled in services? An empirical investigation

I fit a two-sector general equilibrium model to U.S. data in 1963–2005 in order to infer technological processes that affect the college premium. In skill intensive services factor augmenting technological change is slower for college graduates relative to less skilled workers. I find the opposite in the rest of the economy. This indicates that technological change is more complex than what we observe at the aggregate level. The results are consistent with changes in occupational mixes: low-skill workers in services reallocate into computer complementary occupations to a greater extent than college graduates in that sector. Occupational mixes in the rest of the private sector shift in the opposite direction. Thus, theoretical treatments of the underlying mechanisms of skill biased technological change may be improved by taking into account occupational mixes within broad education-sector groups.     

IS IT WHERE YOU GO OR WHAT YOU STUDY? THE RELATIVE INFLUENCE OF COLLEGE SELECTIVITY AND COLLEGE MAJOR ON EARNINGS

All college students must decide where to attend college and what major to study. We estimate how earnings by college major differ at different college selectivity types. We find major‐specific earnings vary markedly by college selectivity, with the strongest differences among business majors and the weakest differences among science majors. We also find that when comparing earnings of graduates from top colleges to middle or bottom ranked colleges, the distribution of students across majors can be as important as earnings differences by major in accounting for college selectivity earnings gaps. (JEL I2, J3)     

论政府在解决大学生就业矛盾中的作用

近年来,高校毕业生就业难的问题已引起社会的普遍关注。从政府职能部门的角度分析,在大学毕业生资源配置过程中,政府应该发挥公共权力机构的作用,构建有利于大学生就业的体制,调节好大学毕业生的供求,制定促进大学毕业生资源优化配置的政策,引导大学毕业生在国家期望的地区、行业实现最佳配置,以促进整个社会的全面进步。     

A Welfare Analysis of Policy Responses to the Skilled Wage Premium

I build a model with heterogeneous agents which is consistent both with rising wage inequality across education levels and with an increasing relative number of college graduates. I use the model to investigate the welfare implications of policies which influence the structure of net wages. Each policy affects agents directly through taxes and subsides and indirectly as wages respond to changes in the relative supply of skilled and unskilled workers. I find that as wage inequality grows due to skill-biased technological change, policies which promote a more egalitarian wage structure can become increasingly acceptable to all agents and that for nearly all agents, education subsidies may be preferred to direct transfers as a means of decreasing wage inequality. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E60, I28, H52.     

College education and wages in the U.K.: estimating conditional average structural functions in nonadditive models with binary endogenous variables

Recent studies debate how the unobserved dependence between the monetary return to college education and selection into college can be characterised. This paper examines this question using British data. We develop a semiparametric local instrumental variables estimator for identified features of a flexible correlated random coefficient model. These identified features are directly related to the marginal and average treatment effect in policy evaluation. Our results indicate that returns to college systematically differ between actual college graduates and actual college non-graduates. They are on average higher for college graduates and positively related to selection into college for 96% of the individuals. The dependence between selection into college and returns to college education is strongest for individuals with low math test scores at the age of 7, individuals with less educated mothers, and for working-class individuals.     

EVOLUTION OF GENDER DIFFERENCES IN POST‐SECONDARY HUMAN CAPITAL INVESTMENTS: COLLEGE MAJORS

Although women in the United States now complete more college degrees than men, the distribution of college majors among college graduates remains unequal, with women about two‐thirds as likely as men to major in business or science. We develop and estimate a dynamic, overlapping generations model of human capital investments and labor supply. We allow for specific college major choices, instead of aggregating these choices to the education level. Results show that changes in skill prices, higher schooling costs, and gender‐specific changes in home value were each important to the long‐term trends.     

A quantitative theory of the gender gap in wages

This paper measures how much of the gender wage gap over the life cycle is due to the fact that working hours are lower for women than for men. We build a quantitative theory of fertility, labor supply, and human capital accumulation decisions to measure gender differences in human capital investments over the life cycle. We assume that there are no gender differences in the human capital technology and calibrate this technology using wage–age profiles of men. The calibration of females assumes that children involves a forced reduction in hours of work that falls on females rather than on males and that there is an exogenous gender gap in hours of work. We find that our theory accounts for all of the increase in the gender wage gap over the life cycle in the NLSY79 data. The impact of children on the labor supply of females accounts for 56% and 45% of the increase in the gender wage gap over the life cycle among non-college and college females, while the rest is due to the exogenous gender differences in hours of work.     

大学生就业能力分析与提升措施

大学生就业难一直是社会普遍关注的问题,大学生就业竞争力不强的主要因素是就业能力缺失,提升大学生就业能力的有效途径是构建完善的大学生就业生态链,改进大学教育人才培养模式,加强实践教学,确立以创新精神和实践能力为重点的素质教育观。     

Good skills in bad times: Cyclical skill mismatch and the long-term effects of graduating in a recession

We show that cyclical skill mismatch, defined as mismatch between the skills supplied by college graduates and skills demanded by hiring industries, is an important mechanism behind persistent career loss from graduating in recessions. Using Norwegian data, we find a strong countercyclical pattern of skill mismatch among college graduates. Initial labor market conditions have a declining but persistent effect on match quality and skill mismatch early in their careers. Match quality of the first employment may explain up to half of the short-term and most of the long-term earnings loss from graduating in a recession.     

A Reexamination of the Time Path of Wage Differentials in Taiwan

Contrary to the conclusions of a recent paper by Chen and Hsu (Review of Development Economics, vol. 5, 2001, pp. 336–54), wage inequality and returns to college‐educated workers have risen in Taiwan since 1980. Government policies which have caused rapid expansion of the supply of new college graduates have depressed returns for only the youngest cohorts of college graduates. Older cohorts of college graduates experienced rising returns, as have college graduates as a whole. Young college‐educated women's returns fell more and older college‐educated women's returns rose more relative to their male counterparts. Consequently, the rising share of women in the labor force helped amplify these trends. Changing trade patterns have tended to increase labor demand in sectors that use educated labor more intensively, helping to raise returns to skill. However, in contrast to western economies, rising capital intensity does not appear to have accelerated the pay gap by skill in Taiwan.     

Signalling or Human Capital: Evidence from the Finnish Polytechnic School Reform

We use data from the Finnish polytechnic reform to distinguish between human capital and signalling theories of the value of education. We find that the reform increased the earnings of polytechnic graduates compared with those graduating from the same schools before the reform, as predicted by both the human capital and the signalling models. However, we also find that the relative earnings of vocational college graduates decrease after polytechnic graduates start entering the labour market. This finding is inconsistent with the pure human capital model and can be interpreted as evidence that supports the signalling model.     

产业结构调整与大学生就业影响研究

近年来,我国经济迅速发展,产业结构不断调整优化,形成更多对高端人力资源的需求。而我国大学毕业生的就业形势却越来越严峻,很多大学生面临毕业等于失业的尴尬局面,其原因在于高校输出的大学毕业生与市场需求不符。文章分析了产业结构与就业的发展趋势,剖析了大学生就业难的原因,提出了解决产业结构调整对大学生就业影响的对策。     

A COHORT ANALYSIS OF US AGE–EARNINGS PROFILES

Aggregate data on US earnings, classified by period and by age, are decomposed into age, period and cohort effects, using the Bayesian cohort models, which were developed to overcome the identification problem in cohort analysis. The main findings, obtained by comparing college and high school graduates, are threefold. First, the age effects show a downward trend for the age group of 45–49 onwards for high school graduates but do not show any such trend for college graduates. Second, the period effects show a downward trend for high school graduates but reveal no such trend for college graduates. Third, the cohort effects are negligible for both college and high school graduates.     

RELATIVE TEACHER SALARIES AND THE DECISION TO TEACH

Using the 3‐year microdata sample of the American Community Survey for 2009–2011, we examine the effect of state‐level public school teacher salaries relative to those of other college graduates in the state not employed in education on the decision to teach. We find that relative teacher salaries in the state positively affect the share of education majors that are employed as public school teachers at the time of the survey. The effect for males majoring in math, science, and computer education is largest among all estimated effects. A statistically significant effect is also found among females majoring in elementary education. (JEL H75, I20, R23)     

The effect of education on the minimum wage

This research shows for the first time that the level of education has a causal, negative effect on the minimum wage. I use 2SLS, with historical educational data as an instrument for the level of education in 2010, and I find that across the US states a one percentage point greater proportion of college graduates is associated with a real minimum wage that is lower by 1.5%–1.6%. Also, in order to control for state-level omitted variables, I regress the change in the minimum wage on the change in education and I find again a negative, and significantly at the 1% level, effect. Minimum wage is a policy that is chosen by governments according to voters’ preferences. The results of this research imply that when the level of education increases voters prefer a lower minimum wage.     

试论对高校毕业生就业困难群体的服务与指导

近年来,随着高等教育大众化的到来,高校毕业生的就业问题逐渐成为社会普遍关注的焦点问题。而作为高校毕业生的就业困难群体则成为高校就业工作的重中之重。文章对毕业生就业困难群体进行了界定,分析了高校毕业生就业困难群体的类型,并从政府、高校、毕业生本身及用人单位四个层面提出了解决其就业的对策和建议。     

高校毕业生与中、高职毕业生就业情况比较分析

目前,我国高校毕业生就业形势十分严峻,这已成为社会各界普遍关注的问题。造成这种状况的原因除中国人受传统观念的影响外,还有高校大规模扩招、社会对高校毕业生提供的就业岗位不足等,因此,应通过加强思想教育、扩大就业岗位的供给等举措来解决这一社会难题。     

高校就业服务指导工作现状的分析及探讨——基于对南京市六所高校毕业生调研的实证分析

高校就业指导工作对就业有积极促进的作用,从理论上讲参加就业指导课程可以帮助学生了解就业形势、使学生能够适应角色的转换,是帮助大学毕业生迈出人生关键的第一步。但是中国高校就业指导还处于初级阶段,整个机构体系还不够完善,因此就业指导工作对大学生求职的帮助较微弱。在此,我们利用2011年在南京市六所高校调研所得的问卷数据,采用Logistic回归模型进行实证分析,结果证实,大学生参加就业指导课程对其就业无显著影响,而参加实习对其就业有显著的影响。至此提出高校应继续加大就业指导服务工作,建立全方位的就业指导服务,并建立长期的职业生涯规划和就业服务指导工作,积极引导大学生参与实习等实践活动,从而进一步提高大学毕业生的就业率。     

试论职业指导在当前促进职教师资毕业生就业工作中的作用和重要性

当前,高校毕业生就业形势异常严峻,再加上大学生对自我很难有一个全面客观的认识、个人与社会需求之间供需失衡脱节等诸多因素,造成了大量毕业生难以就业、人才过剩的社会现象。以职教师资本科生为例,阐述拓宽职业教育就业途径、开展职业指导对促进高校毕业生就业的作用和重要性。