选择偏差、比较优势与教育的异质性回报∶基于中国微观数据的实证研究

本文根据 2 0 0 0年中国的微观数据 ,运用现代微观计量经济学的分析方法 ,在考虑异质性和选择偏差的基础上 ,估计了 2 0世纪末中国的教育回报。研究结果表明 :与受教育水平相关的收益在人们中间存在显著的异质性 ;在当今中国的劳动力市场上存在一种重要的实证现象 ,即人们根据比较优势原理对教育水平进行选择。传统的普通最小二乘法以及工具变量法都难以对这种选择做出合理的估计 ,我们的分析框架弥补了上述两种方法的缺陷。 2 0 0 0年中国 6个省区城镇青年大学教育的平均回报率为 43 % (年均近 1 1 % )。中国在经历二十多年的市场经济改革后 ,较之 80年代及 90年代初期 ,教育的平均回报有了显著提高 ,中国的教育和劳动力市场已经开始发挥重要作用。     

Rates of Return to Four‐Year University Education: An Application of Regression Discontinuity Design

It is invariably difficult to estimate the rate of return to university education, because of the problem of omitted variable bias. Using a regression discontinuity design, we estimate the effect of a four‐year university education on earnings, and we explore the pathways through which the effect operates. Our estimation exploits the centralized, score‐based college/university admission system in China, where the minimum scores required for university admission are externally determined by the provincial governments. Our findings suggest that being eligible for four‐year university admission implies a sizable increase in earnings. The payoff can be attributed to the prolonged length of education and improvements in education quality, although the quality effects cannot be precisely estimated.     

Estimating returns to education using twins in urban China

This paper empirically estimates the return to education using twins data that the authors collected from urban China. Our ordinary least-squares estimate shows that one year of schooling increases an individual's earnings by 8.4%. If we use a within-twin fixed effects model, the return is reduced to 2.7%, but rises to 3.8% after the correction of measurement error. These results suggest that a large portion of the estimated returns to education is due to omitted ability or the family effect. We further investigate why the true return is low and the omitted ability bias high, and find evidence showing that it may be a consequence of China's education system, which is highly selective and exam oriented. More specifically, we find that high school education may mainly serve as a mechanism to select college students, but as a human capital investment per se it has low returns in terms of earnings. In contrast, both vocational school education and college education have a large return that is comparable to that found in the United States.     

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.     

The Increase in College Premium and the Decline in Low‐Skill Wages: A Signaling Story

The increase in the college premium over the last 30 years in the United States is to a large extent driven by a reduction in noncollege wages. We show that the signaling effects triggered by an improvement in the incentives to attend higher education can explain this fact, as well as the increase in the number of college graduates. Under imperfect credit markets and wealth heterogeneity, higher education is not only a signal of ability but also of individuals' (parents') wealth. General conditions on the distribution of wealth guarantee that after an increase in incentives to attend higher education, the absence of a college degree becomes a more evident signal of low ability. This results in a reduction in low‐skill wages but not necessarily in increased high skill wages. The increased incentives to enroll in college can either arise from a skill‐biased technology change or an improvement in access to higher education. An important difference is that while skill‐biased technology change always results in an increase in the college premium, that is not necessarily the case when the increased incentives to enroll arise from improved access to higher education.     

Wage Inequality and Human Capital Formation under Migration Possibilities

I examine the problem in the relationship between wage inequality and human capital formation under migration possibilities. Unlike previous analyses, I incorporate the education market and the education price into the analysis, and assume that workers bear the pecuniary cost for receiving education. Given such an assumption, migration possibilities do not necessarily increase education demand since the larger demand for education raises the education price and lowers the net return on education. By modelling an economy where workers in the home country (the labour‐sending country) comprise skilled and unskilled workers and they can migrate to the foreign country (the labour‐receiving country), I show that brain gain and brain drain occur simultaneously in the home country. In particular, if wage inequality is larger in the foreign country than in the home country, skilled workers experience brain gain and unskilled workers experience brain drain in the home country. On the other hand, if wage inequality is sufficiently larger in the home country, brain drain occurs in skilled workers and brain gain in unskilled workers.     

Revisiting the Link Between Stock Prices and Goods Prices in OECD Countries

Fisher hypothesis postulates positive relation between stock return and inflation; however early studies document negative relationship between the two and they conclude that stock cannot be used as a hedge against inflation. In this paper we explore long‐run nonlinear relationship between stock price and goods price. Our sample consists of 19 OECD countries; all or some of these countries have been studied before with the findings of linear cointegration between the stock index and goods price index. Based on unit root tests and linear cointegration test, we apply threshold cointegration tests, Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) cointegration test and panel VAR method. With all these econometric methods we arrive at heterogeneous findings as follows: two countries have linear cointegration, five countries have threshold cointegration, nine countries do not have any cointegration and finally two countries provide inconclusive results. Estimates of Fisher coefficient provided by linear and nonlinear cointegration methods, which range between 1.27 and 1.86, are consistent with previous studies. Impulse response analysis from panel VAR for countries having no cointegrating relation shows that shock to inflation produces negative response in stock return, which supports findings of earlier studies.     

Does a college education cause better health and health behaviours?

In this article, we exploit the recent higher education expansion in China to apply a regression discontinuity method to identify the causal effects of higher education on health and health behaviours. We do not find causal effect of a college education on better smoking and drinking behaviours. For our selected measures of health, we do not find causal effect of a college education on better self-assessed health, less chance of having illness in the past 3 months and keeping normal body weight; however, we find that a college education could significantly reduce the probability of having hypertension.     

The selection of migrants and returnees in Romania

This paper uses census and survey data to identify the wage earning ability and the selection of recent Romanian migrants and returnees on observable characteristics. We construct measures of selection across skill groups and estimate the average and the skill‐specific premium for migration and return for three typical destinations of Romanian migrants after 1990. Once we account for migration costs, we find evidence that the selection and sorting of migrants are driven by different returns to skills in countries of destination. Our identification strategy for the effects of work experience abroad permits a cautious causal interpretation of the premium to return migration. This premium increases with migrants' skills and drives the positive selection of returnees relative to non‐migrants. Based on the compatibility of the results with rationality in the migration decisions, we simulate a rational‐agent model of education, migration and return. Our results suggest that for a source country like Romania relatively high rates of temporary migration might have positive long‐run effects on average skills and wages.     

Technological change,occupational tasks and declining immigrant outcomes: Implications for earnings and income inequality in Canada

The earnings and occupational task requirements of immigrants to Canada are analyzed. The growing education levels of immigrants in the 1990s have not led to a large improvement in earnings as one might expect if growing computerization and the resulting technological change was leading to a rising return to non‐routine cognitive skills and a greater wage return to university education. Controlling for education, we find a pronounced cross‐arrival cohort decline in earnings that coincided with cross‐cohort declines in cognitive occupational task requirements and cross‐cohort increases in manual occupational task requirements. The immigrant earnings outcomes had only a small effect on overall Canadian earnings inequality.     

Two Tales on the Returns to Education: The Impact of Trade on Wages

This paper uses micro data from the Current Population Survey combined with data from the US International Trade Commission and Bureau of Economic Analysis to evaluate the impacts of international trade (import penetration and export intensiveness) on wages with a special focus on the returns to education. Consistent with the literature, our empirical analysis provides evidence that the wage rates of similarly skilled workers differ across net‐exporting, net‐importing, and nontradable industries. Our results add to the literature by showing that the wage gap usually found across importing and exporting industries vanishes for highly skilled workers (workers with college degree and beyond) when we control for the cross‐effect between international trade and education, but the wage gap due to international trade still persists for low‐skilled workers. This finding supports the view that education serves as an equalizer and counterbalances the adverse impact from import penetration on wages of highly skilled workers.     

Wage Flexibility and Unemployment: The Keynesian Perspective Revisited

Keynes' main concern in the General Theory is about the capacity of an economy to return to full employment equilibrium when subject to a (negative) demand shock. He maintains that money wages cuts may not help reabsorb unemployment, as they do not necessarily imply a fall in real wages. On the contrary, wage rigidity may be necessary for avoiding that a cumulative process propels the economy far away the full employment equilibrium. Co‐ordination failures in the investment‐saving market are behind this conclusion. However, the analysis is carried out within a static equilibrium framework. This paper is an attempt to focus on the problems of intertemporal co‐ordination arising within the context of a sequential economy. Our analysis of the out‐of‐equilibrium process of adjustment stirred by a shock allows to generalize the original Keynesian intuition. Unemployment emerges as the result of a lack of co‐ordination due to irreversibly constrained choices, and not only nominal but also real wage flexibility does not necessarily help to restore equilibrium. As a matter of fact, it may even be harmful, by triggering processes that make the economy diverge from equilibrium. Our analysis has important analytical implications as regards the role of market imperfections and the interpretation of the effects of monetary policy.     

Returns to schooling in Kazakhstan

This paper examines rates of return to schooling in Kazakhstan using OLS (Ordinary Least Squares) and instrumental variable (IV) methodologies. We use spouse's education and smoking as instruments. We find that spouse's education is a valid instrument and that conventional OLS estimates that assume the exogenous nature of schooling, and hence do not control for endogeneity bias, may underestimate the true rates of return. The results indicate that the returns to schooling in Kazakhstan have increased with transition. This may reflect the relative scarcities of highly educated people in Kazakhstan with human capital that employers require and, following the market reforms, reward accordingly.     

Education decisions and labour market outcomes

The financial return to a college degree is an increasing concern amid rising tuition costs and stagnant wages. Using the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), I analyse the effect of post-secondary choices on wages for individuals entering the labour force between 2004 and 2012. Matching methods provide evidence of strong returns to earning a bachelor’s degree for both genders, similar to previous literature. Relative to high school graduates, women see wage benefits of 8–21% for some college attendance. However, men see negative effects of between 6%–13% from some college relative to high school graduates. The returns to a sub-baccalaureate degree as compared to earning some two-year credits is between 8%–25% for women and 8–14% for men. Further, the wage returns to a sub-baccalaureate degree as compared to earning some four-year credits is between 9%–17% for women and 9–20% for men. This translates into an additional $2,500-$4,700 per year for women and an additional $2,900-$6,400 per year for men. Since the average respondent with some four-year college experience has 2.3 years of earned post-secondary credits, shifting some into sub-baccalaureate programs may substantially decrease both the financial and time commitments of post-secondary education while increasing the returns after degree attainment.     

DISENTANGLING THE COLLEGE WAGE PREMIUM: ESTIMATING A MODEL WITH ENDOGENOUS EDUCATION CHOICES*

This article proposes and empirically implements a structural model of education choices and wage determination to quantitatively evaluate the contributions of productivity enhancement and ability signaling in the college wage premium. The model is estimated under various distributional parameterizations using 1990 U.S. Census 5% Public Use Micro Sample. Under these parameterizations, I find that college education enhances attendees' productivity by about 40%, and productivity enhancement accounts for close to two‐thirds of the college wage premium.     

THE ABSENCE OF THE BOOK‐TO‐MARKET EFFECT IN THE TAIWAN STOCK MARKET: A DECOMPOSITION APPROACH

This paper examines the absence of the book‐to‐market equity (BM) effect in the Taiwan stock market, applying the BM decomposition proposed by Daniel and Titman (2006 ). First, we do not observe a significantly negative correlation between future stock return and intangible return on research‐and‐development‐intensive firms in Taiwan, which is inconsistent with the US evidence documented by Daniel and Titman. Second, undervaluation of research‐and‐development‐intensive firms possibly leads to the absence of the BM effect. Those firms, most of which have low BM, perform well not only in the past, but also in the future, thereby obscuring the BM effect.     

Intergenerational Transfer of Human Capital and Optimal Education Policy

We study the design of education policies (subsidies and public education) when parents' investment in education is motivated by warm‐glow altruism and determines the probability that a child has a high ability. The optimal subsidy is not necessarily positive. It is determined by two conflicting terms: a Pigouvian term (warm‐glow altruists do not properly account for the impact of education on future generations) and a “paternalistic” effect (the warm‐glow term may not be fully included in social welfare). Finally, total crowding out of private expenditure (for one of the types) by public education may be desirable.     

Selective immigration policy and its impacts on Canada's native‐born population: A general equilibrium analysis

This paper analyzes the effects of skilled immigration on the wage inequality between different education groups and the welfare of the incumbent population. I use a heterogenous agent overlapping generations model with endogenous discrete college education choice and calibrate it to match the features of 1981 Canadian economy. My quantitative analysis suggests that reducing the skilled immigration rate generates a rise in the growth rate of the wage inequality between college‐educated and non‐college workers. As skilled immigrants are admitted at a lower rate, more natives opt for college education in the economy. My welfare analysis shows that the incumbent young and college‐educated population benefits more from a reduction in the skilled immigration rate. On the other hand, young generations with below college education face welfare losses. My results suggest that skilled immigration contributes positively to the overall welfare in the economy.     

Labour Mobility and Returns to Experience in Foreign Firms*

This paper uses Finnish linked employer–employee panel data to study whether employees are able to appropriate returns to knowledge accumulated in foreign‐owned firms when moving to domestic firms. The estimates indicate that highly educated employees earn a return to prior experience in a foreign‐owned firm, which is over and above the return to other previous experience. These employees do not appear to pay for the knowledge they accumulate in the form of lower starting wages in foreign‐owned firms.