Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Incentives for Schools, Educational Signals and Labour Market Outcomes

Contents:

Author Info

  • Uschi Backes-Gellner

    () (Institute for Strategy and Business Economics, University of Zurich)

  • Stephan Veen

    () (Institute for Strategy and Business Economics, University of Zurich)

Abstract

Central exams have been discussed as an incentive to improve educational outcomes. In our paper we study the impact of central exams on labor market outcomes. We explain the quality choice of schools under central and non-central exams and model the resulting students’ schooling decisions and employers’ wage decisions. We use the German Abitur and the variation among the German federal states with respect to central exams as a quasi experimental design. We expect the ratio of Abitur holders to increase in states without central exams and their wage premiums to decrease at the same time. In states with central exams these effects should not occur. We test our implications with official statistics on education and with the GSOEP. The first two implications are born out in the data. Finally, explanations and policy recommendations are discussed.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.isu.uzh.ch/leadinghouse/WorkingPapers/0009_lhwpaper.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by University of Zurich, Institute for Strategy and Business Economics (ISU) in its series Economics of Education Working Paper Series with number 0009.

as in new window
Length: 40 pages
Date of creation: Jun 2006
Date of revision: Jun 2006
Handle: RePEc:iso:educat:0009

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Plattenstrasse 14, CH-8032 Zürich
Phone: ++41 1 634 29 27
Fax: ++41 1 634 43 48
Email:
Web page: http://www.isu.uzh.ch
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: Education Economics; School choice; Incentives for Schools; Central Exams; Economic impact; Labor Market Outcome;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

References

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.:
as in new window
  1. Audrey Light & Wayne Strayer, 2004. "Who Receives the College Wage Premium?: Assessing the Labor Market Returns to Degrees and College Transfer Patterns," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 39(3).
  2. Anabela Botelho & Lígia Pinto, 2003. "Students' expectations of the economic returns to college education Results of a controlled experiment," NIMA Working Papers 27, Núcleo de Investigação em Microeconomia Aplicada (NIMA), Universidade do Minho.
  3. Miller, Paul W. & Mulvey, Charles & Martin, Nick, 2004. "A test of the sorting model of education in Australia," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(5), pages 473-482, October.
  4. Ludger Woessmann, 2004. "The Effect Heterogeneity of Central Exams: Evidence from TIMSS, TIMSS-Repeat and PISA," CESifo Working Paper Series 1330, CESifo Group Munich.
  5. Webbink, Dinand & Hartog, Joop, 2004. "Can students predict starting salaries? Yes!," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 103-113, April.
  6. Effinger, M.R. & Polborn, M.K., 1997. "A Model of Vertically Differenciated Education," Papers 97.469, Toulouse - GREMAQ.
  7. Hendrik Jürges & Kerstin Schneider, 2005. "Dynamische Lohneffekte beruflicher Weiterbildung," MEA discussion paper series 05092, Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA) at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy.
  8. Andrew Weiss, 1995. "Human Capital vs. Signalling Explanations of Wages," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(4), pages 133-154, Fall.
  9. Bishop, John H, 1997. "The Effect of National Standards and Curriculum-Based Exams on Achievement," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(2), pages 260-64, May.
  10. John H. Tyler & Richard J. Murnane & John B. Willett, 2000. "Estimating The Labor Market Signaling Value Of The GED," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 115(2), pages 431-468, May.
  11. Giorgio Brunello & Claudio Lucifora & Rudolf Winter-Ebmer, 2004. "The Wage Expectations of European Business and Economics Students," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 39(4).
  12. Wikstrom, Christina & Wikstrom, Magnus, 2005. "Grade inflation and school competition: an empirical analysis based on the Swedish upper secondary schools," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 309-322, June.
  13. Costrell, Robert M, 1994. "A Simple Model of Educational Standards," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 956-71, September.
  14. Eugene A. Kroch & Kriss Sjoblom, 1994. "Schooling as Human Capital or a Signal: Some Evidence," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 29(1), pages 156-180.
  15. Hendrik Jürges & Kerstin Schneider, 2004. "International Differences in Student Achievement: An Economic Perspective," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 5(3), pages 357-380, 08.
  16. Bishop, J., 1997. "The Effect of national Standards and Curriculum-Based Exams on Achievement," Papers 97-01, Cornell - Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies.
  17. Gundlach, Erich & Wößmann, Ludger, 2004. "Bildungsressourcen, Bildungsinstitutionen und Bildungsqualität: Makroökonomische Relevanz und mikroökonomische Evidenz," Open Access publications from Kiel Institute for the World Economy info:hdl:10419/3311, Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
  18. Spence, A Michael, 1973. "Job Market Signaling," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 87(3), pages 355-74, August.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. G Migali & Steve Bradley, 2012. "The direct and indirect effects of education policy on school and post school outcomes," Working Papers 24958831, Lancaster University Management School, Economics Department.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iso:educat:0009

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Christian Rupietta).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.