This Paper examines cross-country variations in the return to schooling for men and women and considers some of the stylised facts that have emerged from the extensive international literature on private returns to schooling. We examine the relationship across countries between these returns and a range of controls that can be grouped into three broad areas (i) supply factors, (ii) demand factors, and (iii) governmental policies and institutional factors. We find that the returns are decreasing in both labour force participation and, in some cases, in the average level of schooling in the population. In the multivariate analysis the only education variables that consistently matter are the proportions completing primary or third level education, which has negative and positive effects respectively. Standard measures of openness such as trade volume have positive effects, and we also find that measures of protection raise the return to schooling. Net inflows of foreign investment are associated with lower schooling returns - a result difficult to reconcile with the argument that capital is complementary to high skill labour and hence increases the skill premium.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number
3199.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)