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Using Heteroscedasticity to Estimate the Returns to Education

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Author Info

  • Vincent Hogan

    (University College Dublin)

  • Roberto Rigobon

    (Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Abstract

We apply a new estimator to the measurement of the economic returns to education. We control for endogenous education, unobserved ability and measurement error using only the natural heteroscedasticty of wages and education attainment. Our prefered estimate, 6.07%, is closer to the OLS estimate but smaller (and more precise) than the estimates typically reported by studies that use IV. Our results indicate that the biases generated by unobserved ability and measurement error tend to cancel each other out as suggested by Griliches (1977). We also present Monte Carlo evidence to show that the finite sample bias our estimator is small.

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File URL: http://www.ucd.ie/economics/research/papers/2003/WP03.01.pdf
File Function: First version, 2003
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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by School Of Economics, University College Dublin in its series Working Papers with number 200301.

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Length: 28 pages
Date of creation: 19 Jan 2003
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:ucn:wpaper:200301

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Postal: UCD, Belfield, Dublin 4
Phone: +353-1-7067777
Fax: +353-1-283 0068
Web page: http://www.ucd.ie/economics
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Keywords: Identification; Returns to Education;

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References

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  1. Angrist, Joshua D & Krueger, Alan B, 1991. "Does Compulsory School Attendance Affect Schooling and Earnings?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 106(4), pages 979-1014, November.
  2. Esther Duflo, 2000. "Schooling and Labor Market Consequences of School Construction in Indonesia: Evidence from an Unusual Policy Experiment," NBER Working Papers 7860, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  3. Gabriele Fiorentini & Enrique Sentana Iváñez, 1997. "Identification, estimation and testing of conditionally heteroskedastic factor models," Working Papers. Serie AD 1997-22, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
  4. Harmon, Colm & Walker, Ian, 1995. "Estimates of the economic return to schooling for the United Kingdom," Open Access publications from University College Dublin urn:hdl:10197/647, University College Dublin.
  5. Rigobon, Roberto & Sack, Brian, 2004. "The impact of monetary policy on asset prices," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(8), pages 1553-1575, November.
  6. Christian Belzil & J�rgen Hansen, 2002. "Unobserved Ability and the Return to Schooling," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(5), pages 2075-2091, September.
  7. Katz, Lawrence F. & Autor, David H., 1999. "Changes in the wage structure and earnings inequality," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 26, pages 1463-1555 Elsevier.
  8. Charles F. Manski & John V. Pepper, 1998. "Monotone Instrumental Variables with an Application to the Returns to Schooling," NBER Technical Working Papers 0224, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  9. Douglas Staiger & James H. Stock, 1997. "Instrumental Variables Regression with Weak Instruments," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(3), pages 557-586, May.
  10. Roberto Rigobon, 2003. "Identification Through Heteroskedasticity," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(4), pages 777-792, November.
  11. Harmon, C & Ian Walker, 1995. "Estimates of the economic return to schooling for the UK," IFS Working Papers W95/12, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
  12. David Card, 2000. "Estimating the Return to Schooling: Progress on Some Persistent Econometric Problems," NBER Working Papers 7769, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  13. Griliches, Zvi, 1977. "Estimating the Returns to Schooling: Some Econometric Problems," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(1), pages 1-22, January.
  14. Mervyn King & Enrique Sentana & Sushil Wadhwani, 1990. "Volatiltiy and Links Between National Stock Markets," NBER Working Papers 3357, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  15. Hogan, Vincent & Ian Walker, 2002. "Education Choice under Uncertainty," Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2002 103, Royal Economic Society.
  16. Rummery, Sarah & Vella, Francis & Verbeek, Marno, 1999. "Estimating the returns to education for Australian youth via rank-order instrumental variables," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 491-507, November.
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Citations

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Cited by:
  1. Francis Vella & Lídia Farré & Roger Klein, 2008. "A Parametric Control Function Approach to Estimating the Returns to Schooling in the Absence of Exclusion Restrictions: An Application to the NLSY," Working Papers. Serie AD 2008-16, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
  2. Harmon, Colm & Hogan, Vincent & Walker, Ian, 2003. "Dispersion in the economic return to schooling," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 205-214, April.
  3. David Audretsch & Erik Lehmann & Susanne Warning, 2004. "University Spillovers: Does the Kind of Science Matter?," Working Papers of the Research Group Heterogenous Labor 04-04, Research Group Heterogeneous Labor, University of Konstanz/ZEW Mannheim.
  4. Markus Jochmann & Winfried Pohlmeier, 2004. "The Causal Effect of Schooling : empirical Evidence from Germany," Working Papers of the Research Group Heterogenous Labor 04-05, Research Group Heterogeneous Labor, University of Konstanz/ZEW Mannheim.

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