Individual heterogeneity in the returns to schooling: instrumental variables quantile regression using twins data

Considerable effort has been exercised in estimating mean returns to education while carefully considering biases arising from unmeasured ability and measurement error. Recent work has investigated whether there are variations from the “mean” return to education across the population with mixed results. We use an instrumental variables estimator for quantile regression on a sample of twins to estimate an entire family of returns to education at different quantiles of the conditional distribution of wages while addressing simultaneity and measurement error biases. We test whether there is individual heterogeneity in returns to education and find that: more able individuals obtain more schooling perhaps due to lower marginal costs and/or higher marginal benefits of schooling and that higher ability individuals (those further to the right in the conditional distribution of wages) have higher returns to schooling consistent with a non-trivial interaction between schooling and unobserved abilities in the generation of earnings. The estimated returns are never lower than 9 percent and can be as high as 13 percent at the top of the conditional distribution of wages but they vary significantly only along the lower to middle quantiles. Our findings may have meaningful implications for the design of educational policies.     

Private returns to education versus education spill-over effects

In this study we test whether education spill-over effects biase private returns to education. We newly investigate for such effects within narrowly defined occupational groups of a given firm using, going thus a step further than earlier studies analysing such effects at employer level or within regions. Using panel data from a Swiss employer-based labour force survey of 1996 we find clear empirical evidence for education spill-over effects on individual wages (2%). This result proved to be robust against an alternative explanation based on imperfect substitution between highly and less educated workers. Consequently, conventionally calculated private returns to education are shown to be biased upwards. This work was undertaken under the TSER program PL980182 for the PuRE project and was supported by the Swiss Federal Office for Education and Science. I thank Josef Zweimüller and Rafael Lalive for their valuable suggestions. Any remaining errors are my own.     

The educational and labor market returns to preschool attendance in Austria

Preschool attendance is widely recognized as a key ingredient for later socioeconomic success, mothers’ labor market participation, and leveling the playing field for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. However, the empirical evidence for these claims is still relatively scarce, particularly in Europe. Using data from the 2011 Austrian European Union Statistics of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), we contribute to this literature by studying the effects of having attended preschool for the adult Austrian population. We find strong and positive effects of preschool attendance on later educational attainment, the probability of working full time, hourly wages, and the probability that the mother is in the labor market. Full time workers at the bottom and the top of the distribution benefit less than those in the middle. Women in particular benefit more in terms of years of schooling and the probability of working full time. Other disadvantaged groups (second generation migrants; people with less educated parents) also often benefit more in terms of education and work.     

Education reform and education gaps

We estimate the causal effect of the Italian 2009 “Gelmini” education reform on four academic performance gaps relating to immigration status, gender, parental social status, and parental education. The reform led to a reduction in the number of teachers and an increase in class size. Lags in implementing the reform for different grades is used to specify a difference-in-difference identification strategy. We find that the reform had a statistically and economically significant effect on the immigrant-native gap and on the gender gap, but not on the gap between students with more and less favourable family background. Particularly, our findings show that students with an immigration background were the main losers from the Gelmini reform.     

中国城乡教育收益率差异与收入差距

本文利用CHNS数据,研究了历次调查年份分城乡和性别的教育收益率的动态变化。研究发现,分城乡和性别的教育收益率都基本呈现逐年递增的趋势,但城镇的教育收益率总是高于农村,而无论是城镇还是农村,女性的教育收益率都高于男性。从动态变化来看,自2000年以来城乡教育收益率的差异逐年加大,其中主要是城乡男性劳动力的教育收益率差距增大。本文的研究表明,除教育水平本身的差异以外,教育收益率差异的扩大也是引起城乡收入差距加剧的重要原因。     

Real-time decentralized information processing and returns to scale

We use a model of real-time decentralized information processing to understand how constraints on human information processing affect the returns to scale of organizations. We identify three informational (dis)economies of scale: diversification of heterogeneous risks (positive), sharing of information and of costs (positive), and crowding out of recent information due to information processing delay (negative). Because decision rules are endogenous, delay does not inexorably lead to decreasing returns to scale. However, returns are more likely to be decreasing when computation constraints, rather than sampling costs, limit the information upon which decisions are conditioned. The results illustrate how information processing constraints together with the requirement of informational integration cause a breakdown of the replication arguments that have been used to establish nondecreasing technological returns to scale. November 24, 1999; revised version: March 14, 2000     

高职院校学分制教学改革的探讨

本文主要是探讨高职院校学分制改革的相关问题,在研究学分制内涵及其特征的基础上,比较系统地阐述了高职院校实施学分制的意义,并分析了影响学分制改革的各种因素,提出了推进高职院校学分制改革的措施和方法.     

Measuring the consequences of pension reform applying liquidation and longevity considerations

In seeking to understand IMF lending early large sample econometric studies tended to focus on economic factors. Political and institutional influences were often deemed to be reflected in the frequently large residual. At the same time increasing anecdotal evidence was being amassed to suggest that political factors were indeed important. However, more recent studies have claimed that, by using superior estimating techniques, a satisfactory explanation of Fund lending can be provided without needing to include political and institutional factors, which are in any case difficult to measure and model. This study shows that there is large sample evidence supporting the importance of some of these variables, though their contribution to predicting the pattern of IMF agreements is minimal. It goes on to discuss some of the implications of this for the Fund as the world's premier international financial institution.

The research upon which this paper is based was supported by the UK Department for International Development (DFID). While this support is gratefully acknowledged, the views and opinions expressed are those of the authors alone. Thanks to Chris Worswick and two anonymous referees for comments, and Connie Tulus and Helgi Maki for research assistance.     

城镇居民教育收益率的地区差异及其解释

利用中国社会科学院经济研究所"中国城乡居民收入分配"课题组1995年和2002年的家庭抽样调查数据,本文使用分层线性模型重新估计了1995年、2002年我国居民的教育收益率,得到了不同于OLS估计的结果:(1)我国城镇居民教育收益率的地区差异很大,差异主要来源于省内各城市之间,来源于省间的差别并不显著;(2)计算了省内城市劳动力市场化程度对当地教育收益率的边际影响,发现劳动力市场的发育确实有利于提高教育收益率,而且劳动力市场化程度的差异在一定程度上为各地教育收益率的差异提供了解释。     

Long-run costs of piecemeal reform: Wage inequality and returns to education in Vietnam

In this paper, we examine changes in wage structure and wage premia during Vietnam’s transition from command to market economy. Relative to other work in this literature, our paper is unique in that we identify the policies that lead to such changes. By examining skill premium trends along the two dimensions of particular importance to the transition—state or non-state firms, and traded or non-traded industries—we are able to separate the contribution of external liberalization to wage growth and rising skill premia from that of domestic labor market reforms, and to examine potential interactions between the two types of reform. The results point to the high cost of incomplete reform in Vietnam. Capital market segmentation creates a two-track market for skills, in which state sector workers earn high salaries while non-state workers face lower demand and lower compensation. Growth is reduced directly by diminished allocative efficiency and reduced incentives to acquire education, and indirectly by higher wage inequality and rents for workers with access to state jobs.     

Testing for the presence of some features of increasing returns to adoption factors in energy system dynamics: An analysis via the learning curve approach

The purpose of this paper is to explain the sources of energy system lock-in. It presents a comparative analysis of the respective contributions of some features of increasing returns to adoption factors, i.e. learning-by-doing, learning-by-searching and returns to scale effects in explaining the technological change dynamics in the energy system. The paper is technically based on a critical analysis of the learning curve approach. Econometric estimation of learning and scale effects inherent to seven energy technologies were performed by the use of several learning curve specifications. These specifications permit to deal with some crucial issues related to the learning curve estimation which are associated with the problem of omitted variable bias, the endogeneity effects and the choice of learning indicators. Results show that dynamic economies from learning effects coupled with static economies from scale effects are responsible for the lock-in phenomena of the energy system. They also show that the magnitude of such effects is correlated with the technology life cycle (maturity). In particular, results point out that, 1) the emerging technologies exhibit low learning rates associated with diseconomies of scale which are argued to be symptomatic of the outset of the deployment of new technologies characterized by diffusion barriers and high level of uncertainty, 2) the evolving technologies present rather high learning rates meaning that they respond quickly to capacity expansion and R&D activities development, 3) conventional mature technologies display low learning rates but increasing returns to scale implying that they are characterized by a limited additional diffusion prospects.     

Returns to scale in DEA models for performance evaluations

The technology industry is a major driving force in Taiwan's economic development. The Taiwan government employed technology development programs (TDPs) to stimulate industrial technology research and development to enhance industry competitiveness. This paper uses Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a nonparametric approach, to evaluate the relative efficiency of decision-making units (DMUs) that use multiple inputs to produce multiple outputs, to evaluate the relative managerial efficiency of TDPs. The inputs are human resources and expenditures. The outputs are patents and technology outcomes. We investigated TDP performance over the period from 1999 to 2003. This study uses CCR and BCC models, which are DEA model variants, to calculate efficiency indexes. CCR is adopted under the assumption of constant returns to scale. BCC is used to understand the variable returns to scale, including the constant, decreasing and increasing. We found that TDPs in the material and chemical engineering fields in 1999 and 2001, machinery and aerospace fields in 1999, and communication and optoelectronics fields in 2002 had better performance than the other TDPs. We provide potential improvements for inefficient DMUs.     

高职院校公共英语教学改革的思路与对策

针对目前高职公共英语教学存在＂高等＂有余＂、职业性＂不足的现象,文章提出了在高职公共英语教学中引进职业英语,衔接行业英语,培养职业英语技能的教学改革思路,并提出了按照这一思路进行英语教学改革的一些具体对策。     

On the Equivalence of Two Concepts of Returns to Scale

We examine the relationship between two widely used concepts of returns to scale at different levels of analysis. We show that while their weak global versions are equivalent, the strict global versions are not so. Versions at a given input vector are never equivalent, which invalidates a result by Ide and Takayama (1987).     

拉丁美洲1990年代经济改革特点--以墨西哥经济改革为例

拉丁美洲在20世纪90年代前后开始的全面经济改革,新自由主义属性显著。在这一过程中,墨西哥的新自由经济改革颇具代表性。因此,以墨西哥的加工贸易和国有企业私有化为例,分析拉丁美洲经济改革中的特点以及出现的问题。     

Quantile regression with sample selection: Estimating women's return to education in the U.S.

This study uses quantile regression techniques to analyze changes in the returns to education for women. The data used is the March Current Population Survey for the years 1968, 1973, 1979, 1986 and 1990. The first step in estimating the single (linear) index selection equation uses Ichimura's (1993) semiparametric procedure. To correct for an unknown form of a sample selection bias in the quantile regression, the second step incorporates a nonparametric method, using an idea similar to one developed by Heckman (1980) and Newey (1991) for mean regression, and Buchinsky (1998) for quantile regression.  The results show that: (a) the returns to education increased enormously for the younger cohorts, but very little for the older cohorts; (b) in general the returns are higher at the lower quantiles in the beginning of the sample period and higher at the higher quantiles by the end of the sample period; (c) there is a significant sample selection bias for all age groups at almost all quantiles; (d) toward the end of the sample period there is a significant convergence of the returns at the various quantiles, especially for the younger cohorts and age groups; and (e) the semiparametric estimates of the selection equation are considerably different from those obtained for a parametric probit model.     

Signal-extracting education in an overlapping generations model

Summary. In order to get good positions in companies, people try to enter highly-ranked universities. However, abilities vary greatly between individuals. High-ability individuals have an incentive to send signals to firms by obtaining a higher level of education in order to distinguish themselves from low-ability individuals. This paper constructs an overlapping generations model in order to examine the macroeconomic consequences of such sorting behavior of individuals. There are two kinds of possible equilibria in our model. In one equilibrium, only the high-ability agent can obtain higher education and thus an elite society emerges. In the other equilibrium, all ability types have the chance to obtain higher education and thus a society with mass higher education emerges. We also discuss the possibility of multiple equilibria of these different steady states and the dynamic change in wage differentials.Received: 9 October 2002, Revised: 15 July 2003, JEL Classification Numbers: D82, J31, O10.The authors acknowledge Osamu Hayashida, Noriyoshi Hemmi, Hideshi Itoh, Michihiro Kandori, Toshihiro Matsumura, Takuya Nakaizumi, Osamu Nishimura, Ryoji Ohdoi, Tadashi Yagi, Noriyuki Yanagawa, and seminar participants at Doshisha University, the University of Tokyo, and Contract Theory Workshop at Kyoto University for helpful comments and suggestions. We would also like to thank an anonymous referee for valuable comments. This paper is part of the academic Project on Intergenerational Equity (PIE), funded by a scientific grant from Japans Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (grant number 603).     

The impact of education expansion on wage inequality

The findings on education expansion and income inequality have important implications for policymakers to implement effective policies to reduce income inequality. This study attempts to explain how education expansion affects income inequality by education distribution and the rate of return to education. We decompose the effect of education expansion on wage gaps into price effect and structure effect. We compare the income inequality from 2002 to 2013 using the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) 2002 and CHIP2013 survey data and employ FFL decomposition method. Our findings suggest that income inequality increased in 2013 and that income inequality among the high-income groups increased even more significantly. The structure effect of education expansion on income inequality is negative, when average education increases one year, the income gap between 80th and 20th will decrease 1.2%, in other words, education expansion decreases income inequality by allowing a wide range of individuals to attend college. However, this effect is offset by the price effect, which is positive and much more significant in magnitude. One extra year of average education will increase income gap by 29% which means that the demand for high-skilled labour is increasing faster than the supply and thus lead to the increasing premium for higher education return.     

Deterministic heterogeneity in tastes and product differentiation in the K-logit model

In this paper we use the K-deformed multinomial logit model to study product differentiation. The focus is on the economic interpretation of the deformation parameter which is the key parameter of this model. Then we establish the relationship between this parameter and probability choice, price elasticity and markup.     

On the effect of R&D in returns to experience

Using a recent macroeconomic database, we empirically estimate an ‘erosion effect’: we show that Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth decreases returns to experience. The ‘erosion effect’ is typically stronger within the rich and the most experienced countries in the world. This article complements the scarce microeconomic literature on the issue and the theoretical macroeconomic literature recently coming to the conclusion that this effect has important implications for the interaction between human capital accumulation and TFP.