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Aggregate Unemployment Decreases Individual Returns to Education

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Author Info
Ammermüller, Andreas
Kuckulenz, Anja
Zwick, Thomas

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Abstract

On the basis of a theoretical model, we argue that higher aggregate unemployment affects individual returns to education. We therefore include aggregate unemployment and an interaction term between unemployment and the individual education level in a standard Mincer equation. Our results show that an increase in regional unemployment by 1% decreases the returns to education by 0.005 percentage points. This implies that higher skilled employees are better sheltered from labour market changes with respect to their jobs but encounter larger wage changes than less skilled employees. Differences in regional unemployment can in addition almost fully explain the observed large differences in regional returns to education. We use representative individual data and regional panel variation in unemployment between different German regions and for different employee groups. We demonstrate that our results are robust with respect to aggregation bias, time lags and potential endogeneity of the unemployment variable.

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Paper provided by ZEW - Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung / Center for European Economic Research in its series ZEW Discussion Papers with number 06-34.

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Date of creation: 2006
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Handle: RePEc:zbw:zewdip:4618

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Keywords: returns to education unemployment regional variation

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data
J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

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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.:
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(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.)

  1. Andreas Ammermueller & Claudio Lucifora & Federica Origo & Thomas Zwick, 2007. "Still Searching for the Wage Curve: Evidence from Germany and Italy," IZA Discussion Papers 2674, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
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